


This Is Going to be Fun (full length version)

by Unsentimentalf



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-14
Updated: 2011-03-14
Packaged: 2017-10-16 23:33:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 42,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/170565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Unsentimentalf/pseuds/Unsentimentalf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>“You and me. And him. It’s not a triangle, John. It’s lines of battle, and without him there’s no fight.”</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is Going to be Fun (full length version)

**Author's Note:**

> By request, a single file version of my Sherlock/John/Moriarty slash series. Dark throughout.

**Part 1- This is Going to be Fun**

John became gradually aware that he had been asleep. The dream, something about a beach in China, was fading. The light around his curtains was still the diffuse London glow, not yet morning. The traffic noise was intermittent. He’d drop back to sleep again in a minute.

Except that something was pushing at his attention, holding him from sleep. Something. A rustle, and breathing. Someone. In the room...

”Sherlock?”

A high laugh at that. “You wish.”

Who the hell...oh fuck! A second to recognise that voice and he was starting to roll out from under the duvet, towards his chest of drawers and the gun under his rolled socks.

“Oh, don’t get up on my account. You look so comfortable under there.”

He knew a threat when he heard it, under the drawled amusement. Knew the extreme danger he was in, right now. Stopped moving, propped up on his elbows agains the headboard, trying to make out the man in the shadows by the window.

God, was Sherlock all right? He could be lying dead downstairs, right now. John would have been woken by a gunshot, surely. Surely. He dragged his thoughts away from the floor below with a huge effort. He couldn’t afford to be distracted by that right now. Training. Survive this, then think about other survivors.

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Tell me he’s been pining for me.”

Three months. And not so much pining as frantic. John didn’t answer.

“Come now, Johnny boy.” Moriarty walked forward, sat on the edge of the bed, swung his legs onto the duvet and John snatched his own up to his chest, away from the muffled contact. The other man settled crosslegged at the end of the bed. John was sharply aware that he was keeping one hand always down somewhere near his waist.

“If you don’t keep up your end of this conversation I shall rapidly become bored.”

John could just make out briefly bared teeth in the poor light. OK. Bored was going to be a bad idea. So he’d have to speak.

“Ask him yourself.” Which was probably the wrong answer; he didn’t really want Moriarty hunting Sherlock through the flat with a gun. But on the other hand Sherlock would doubtless be better at looking after himself right now than John was.

“Itty-bitty defiance there. That’s cute.” A pause. “Don’t do it again.”

It didn’t matter what lilting tones the man used. John heard the cold and dark behind his words. Don’t get drawn into dominance games, he told himself. Survive. Hate doesn’t help. His spine was cold. Bare arms had wrapped around duvet-covered knees; he forced himself to relax.

“He knew you weren’t dead,” he offered. Feed the man’s vanity, just a little. “What are you doing here?”

“Visiting.” He could see Moriarty’s head turning to scan the shadowy room. “It’s a bit... military up here, isn’t it? No style. No warmth. No wonder you’ve been trying to crawl into his bed instead.”

John briefly forgot survival in a wave of indignation. “I have not!”

“You tried.” Moriarty’s attention was full on him now. “He turned you down, didn’t he? Was he all sweet about it?”

Sherlock hadn’t been sweet, no. It had been about three weeks ago. They’d been on forty eight hours without sleep, the criminal had been apprehended after a violent struggle and Sherlock had come way inside John’s personal space once too often, this time to run fingers over his bloodied cheek. John, who had been struggling with this particular problem for months, had somehow resisted the temptation to do anything direct about it and had instead just murmured his name, somewhat desperately.

And Sherlock had dropped his hand, frowning. Had said, “Not interested,” briefly, and turned away.

To be fair, John didn’t think that Sherlock had changed his behaviour, since. But he had. Things would go back to the way they had been before, if he gave it time, but right now it was still rather awkward and uncomfortable and he was unbearably sorry that he’d stuck his neck out at all.

To have Moriarty mock this was intolerable; his fear was being replaced by anger, and he knew that was dangerous but he couldn’t help it.

“Sherlock’s not gay. So what?” he demanded harshly.

“Wrong.” Moriarty’s laugh was high and piercing. “Sherlock’s just not interested in sex with you, Doctor. Nice and reliable doesn’t turn him on. He’s very fond of you.” He giggled. “Very fond. It would be so convenient for both of you. Such a pity.”

“What do you want?” Much more of this and John would punch the bastard out, gun or not. Temper, he told himself, could get him killed.

“By a bizarre coincidence,” the man’s voice had faded to barely audible, “I want what you do. I also intend to have it.”

Sherlock. Moriarty wanted Sherlock. Moriarty, who’d tried to murder him...anger pushed John forward, up onto his knees, half a head over the man sitting on the bed. The duvet crumpled between them, but he barely noticed the cold air across his skin. “Fuck off. Now.”

Moriarty didn’t flinch. “Sweet. And stupid. Down, boy.”

“He’s not going to sleep with you. You’re a murderous psychopath.”

Moriarty smiled at him, teeth again in the darkness, close up now. His breath smelt slightly of peppermint, his clothes of...leather? “I’m the smartest murderous psychopath in the world. Can you imagine him being able to resist me?”

“Yes.” He had more faith in the man than that. Though God knows, Sherlock might just be tempted.

Moriarty reached out. Fingers touched John’s bare chest. The other hand was still by his side. Holding something. “He doesn’t come up here. I imagine that if something happens to you, he wouldn’t find you till later. Much later. Too late. Shall we play that game? Or are you going to behave?”

John struggled to regain his control. A shot from this distance wouldn’t give him a chance. Or a knife. He pulled back from the hand, sat down. “You don’t have a hope. Even if he wanted...he’s not going to let you anywhere near his back. Or anywhere else. He’s not stupid.”

“Which is where you come in.”

“What?” John looked towards the darkness of the bed, the hidden gun. Dropped his voice further. “Enough crap. What exactly do you think you’re doing in my bedroom.”

“Propositioning you.”

“At gunpoint? Am I meant to be flattered? I’m dull, remember. And you’re so much not my type.”

John was struggling not to laugh hysterically, or hit the man, or something. He was trying to be quiet; bringing Sherlock charging into a room with a man with a gun who wanted to kill him really didn’t seem like a good idea. Bringing Sherlock into a room with a man with a gun who wanted to fuck him probably wasn’t great either. But he wasn’t sure that he could take much more of this conversation. What on earth did it mean? Sherlock could doubtless follow Moriarty’s intentions, but Sherlock was downstairs, asleep, or worse.

“Utterly dull. But dear Sherlock is fond of you.” The word was a sneer. “Sherlock will let you play with the grown-ups. He’ll find your presence reassuring.” Moriarty’s voice turned high and mock excited. “You’ll have his back. And if you play your cards right, all his other bits, too.”

John stared through the darkness, wishing he could see more of the man’s face. “You’re proposing a threesome?” He couldn’t quite believe that he’d got that right.

“You’ll love it. Widen your provincial horizons.”

“I’m not helping you. No.”

“My chances of seducing him without you tagging along are still over 60%. And then he’ll be ...all alone... with me.” He elongated the last few word, clearly delighted at the prospect.

John was uncomfortably reminded of the taxi driver and the pills. Sherlock did not have a highly developed sense of self preservation. No better reason than curiosity and boredom might lure him. And John was sure that there was nothing so benign as lust behind Moriarty’s intention.

Nothing benign about this invitation, either. John wasn’t stupid enough to take it at face value. But at least it would give him some chance of protecting Sherlock. He ran the argument over and over, looking for the flaws. Apart from the massively obvious one.

“He won’t go along with this.”

Nothing but a giggle.

Sherlock wouldn’t. John had been turned down once. He didn’t have such poor manners to put himself forward again. Not to mention the fact that he was not sure that he could cope with another ungracious rejection.

On the other hand, he thought, with a certain guilty thrill, it wasn’t as if his choices right now seemed to extend beyond this and a bullet in the chest. He didn’t have any pride where guns were involved. He’d been shot once.

So he nodded, once. He didn’t intend to actually do it.

“Wonderful. Do try to look a little happier, doctor. This is going to be fun.”

 

John counted the steps down, silently, gathering his unsteady nerve. At six he took a deep breath, called up a voice he’d barely used since Afghanistan.

“Sherlock! Incoming!” he barked, surely loud enough to wake the man, if Sherlock had managed to sleep through the conversation upstairs.

He’d half expected the vindictive shove between his shoulder blades, was already taking the remaining steps two at a time, fast enough not to overbalance. The momentum carried him several paces into the dark living room; he dodged the table, caught his foot on something unanticipated that Sherlock had left on the floor and tumbled forwards. Combat reflexes had him curled up on the carpet behind the limited protection of the table by the time he’d stopped moving.

Everything in here was dark. No crack of light under Sherlock’s bedroom door; the man could be anywhere. He could hear the steady tread of Moriarty coming down the steps, wanted to warn of the gun, but surely Sherlock anticipated that?

Harsh light flooded the room and John blinked. Moriarty, in styled black leather jacket and tight black jeans with his hand on the switch at the bottom of the stairs. And Sherlock, pale and lanky in his dressing gown, with his on the switch by the kitchen.

A few seconds felt like an age. Then Sherlock spoke, in a tone as normal as if it weren’t three in the morning and in this company.

“You can stand up, John.”

Moriarty’s hands were loose by his sides. John could still see the small bulge in his jeans. Sherlock must see it.

“Gun in his right hip pocket.”

“No.” Sherlock’s brief amused smile still didn’t move from his enemy. “That’s a phone. But understandable mistake, in the dark.”

John came up onto his feet. Obvious now, in the light, as Moriarty flipped the sides of his jacket open mockingly, demonstrating that the slim t-shirt, tight jeans left nowhere for a gun. He’d been psyched out. Fucking bastard had played him. In which case...

“Don’t!”

Sherlock’s urgent command stopped him just short of the swing that would have taken the bastard out for the rest of the night. He flung his hands up, exasperated. “Don’t tell me, he’s got a detonator or something.”

“He’s got a phone.” Sherlock’s voice had dropped slightly, carefully. “What is it this time? Surely not bombs again?”

Moriarty squealed in pleasure. “Who knows? Maybe a poor defenceless puppy gets kicked to death. Maybe London’s water supply gets poisoned. What does it matter, Sherlock? Neither of us give a fuck about any of them. But you’ll do what you have to keep them alive anyway, because that’s how you and I keep score.”

John glanced back at Sherlock, hoping to see something of his own disgust reflected. Sherlock was bright eyed, focussed. Not arguing that premise at all.

“That isn’t going to work as coercion.”

“Of course not.” Moriarty sketched a bow. “I’m almost offended that you would think me so crude. The phone’s merely a personal insurance policy. I wouldn’t want a night so promising to end up with your heavy handed friends from the Yard involved.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“I’ll save the bodies up for next time.” He licked his lips. “There’s always a next time.”

A dead man’s switch. John grimaced, backed up a couple of feet towards the window. Out of the line of sight; he wanted to watch both of them. Close enough to tackle Moriarty if necessary. The flat was cold, the heating off for hours. He wished that he’d grabbed something more to wear than the shorts he slept in.

Sherlock was scanning the other man, slowly.

“No need to ask why you’re here.” He paused, a hint of derision in his voice. “Cheap tramp.”

Moriarty’s smile grew wider. “I was so much hoping you’d talk dirty. I couldn’t be sure, and we do hate guessing games, don’t we? But I did hope.“

John saw the twitch of Sherlock’s mouth. He coughed slightly, just to remind his flatmate that he was there.

“Why did he bring you down here, John?” Sherlock sounded genuinely curious.

“He thinks,” John found this rather difficult to explain, “He told me, anyway, that if you had someone to watch your back, you might be...easier.” He felt he needed some further excuse for even passively contemplating this. “I thought he was armed.”

“He thought he’d got the perfect excuse to suck your cock. He’s got it bad. But then you knew that. You just don’t care.” Moriarty was cheerful.

“Shut up.” Sherlock was abrupt. “Keep your nasty little mind away from John, or you’ll find out just how unamusing I can find you.”

“I’m not the one who’s breaking his poor grubby little heart.”

John had never got used to the speed at which Sherlock could move when he wanted to. Before he’d moved more than a couple of paces hand had collided with cheek and Moriarty was hissing, mask dropped for once in what seemed to be genuine fury.

“You’re going to regret that!”

“I very much doubt that.” Sherlock spread himself across the couch. “Where were we? Oh yes. You had a proposition for me. Civilly, this time.”

Moriarty was sulky. “Half of them could die. I could arrange that.”

“You could get what you came for. I could arrange that. If I chose.”

John shifted on the thin carpet. “Sherlock,” he said quietly.

How could the man even think of it? Sherlock was remarkable; no doubt about that. He’d not been surprised that his flatmate didn’t find him equally attractive; there wasn’t much going for him, objectively. But he wasn’t actually physically repugnant. He didn’t sound like Mickey Mouse on acid and dress like something out of a sleazy nightclub.

Most of all, he wasn’t a mass murderer. Moriarty had forced him into that jacket of explosives to taunt Sherlock, had tried to kill both of them. And this vile...thing got a “could be arranged” while he got a “not interested.” Never mind fair, how was that even possible?

Sherlock raised an irritated hand. “Thank you, John. Let’s take all your objections as read, shall we?”

“If you know what they are.” John was bitter, “why the fuck aren’t you paying some goddamn attention to them?”

“I’m paying attention to everything. You don’t normally doubt my judgement.”

“I’ve yet to see any evidence of your judgement tonight, Sherlock! Tell the bastard to go to hell, for God’s sake.”

“No.” Sherlock was thoughtful. “As propositions go, it’s worth a little further consideration.”

“He’s jealous,” Moriarty commented, walking across to the armchair. “Send him to make some coffee, or something, so we can flirt.”

“Shut up.” Sherlock flicked a contemptuous hand at the chair. “I’ll talk to you when I’m ready.”

“Lovely.” Moriarty’s tongue flickered across his lip again. “Bit of trash talk. We are going to have so much fun.”

“Come on, Sherlock. He must make your flesh crawl.”

“Not precisely, no.” Sherlock tugged his dressing gown a little closer, watching the other man. John resisted the temptation to shake him. Sod this.

“If you think you can keep your legs crossed for five minutes, I’m going to put some clothes on.”

Sherlock frowned up at him. “Clothes. Yes. Fine.”

John couldn’t resist a parting shot. “For Christ’s sake, Sherlock. Look at him!” Moriarty grinned, blew him a kiss, camp as they came.

“I am looking.”

“Well then. You can’t surely say that that he turns you on.”

“Of course he... Oh.” Sherlock nodded. “You mean in appearance. Not important.”

“So it’s his charming personality?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

Moriarty was amused. John desperately wanted to talk to-shout at- Sherlock alone but he feared that their enemy would see it as an admission of weakness. John wasn’t going to lose Sherlock an inch of room right now.

What he wanted to do was to go upstairs, get dressed and walk out. Leave them to each other. Even at three in the morning he could find somewhere to get drunk in London. But “I told you so” was going to be no consolation to Sherlock in the morning, less still to Sherlock’s corpse. He could not walk out in clear conscience, knowing that Sherlock might gamble his life again. So he stalked off upstairs for clothes.

He had one leg inside his trousers when he heard footsteps on the stairs. Sherlock, surely, but he dropped the garment anyway, to be unencumbered, just in case.

It was Sherlock, with his laptop. He dropped it on the pillow, tilted the screen so that John could see the video feed from Sherlock’s own machine, and Moriarty still in the armchair reading John’s discarded copy of yesterday’s Times.

Sherlock was ...watching him. Eyes flicked down to the trousers he was pulling on again.

“Don’t,” John said, furious, “you dare look at me like that!”

“John.” Sherlock’s voice was deep and thoughtful and definitely interested.

“No! You get him to fuck off and maybe we’ll discuss it.”

He watched Sherlock’s face. caught the second’s unguarded expression. “You still don’t want me. I’m like his phone; just something to stop you getting killed in the process. No, Sherlock.”

“You’re considerably more than that.” Sherlock sat down on the bed, crossed his legs, unconscious imitation of Moriarty before him. “He is ...difficult to resist. I don’t want to do so. I don’t need to do so. The risks are acceptable, with you there.”

He raised a hand against John’s protestations.

“‘Not interested’ was a decision, not a description. We had a perfectly functional relationship, something that I rarely, if ever, bother with. I wasn’t prepared to tolerate destabilising complications. Circumstances have obviously changed.”

John snorted, buckling his belt. “If you’d felt anything you’d have risked the complications.“ He sighed. “I don’t think that our functional relationship is going to withstand your hopping into bed with the man who kidnapped and tried to kill me in a particularly sadistic manner. But destabilising it for someone you actually want is clearly fine for you.”

Sherlock’s eyes were bright, frustrated. “I want you.”

John struggled against the jolt of lust and anger. “Send him away and we’ll talk about it.”

“I don’t want to.”

“I want you to. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”

Sherlock contemplated that for a moment while John hunted for socks, encountered the solid cold lump of pistol. He considered taking it out, but you don’t bring a gun into a situation unless you can see at least one way that shooting someone was going to improve it.

He glanced at the screen; nothing had changed.

“You’re presuming on an emotional attachment to make demands about exclusivity.” Sherlock sounded a little less sure of himself than usual.

“Yes, right.” John sat on the bed to pull on his socks.”That’s what I’m doing. Just being possessive. I’m not in the slightest concerned about what your bloody nemesis might do to you once you’re naked with your eyes closed.”

“It would be less risky if you were there.”

John shook his head, unbelieving. “Just don’t do it. Kick him out.”

“I can’t.”

And that was quiet, almost embarrassed.

“Of course you can.” John felt cold. Was there coercion here, despite their denials?

“No.” Sherlock was up, pacing the small space beside the bed. “I need to know, John. He’s a puzzle- I can’t walk away with it unsolved. He’s extremely dangerous; I don’t want to take unnecessary risks, alone. But I can’t.... he’s a psychopath and he’s brilliant. He’ll kill people again, John, that’s certain. I can’t turn down the chance to find his weaknesses.”

John was almost relieved. This did at least sound something like Sherlock reasons; reckless and logical. But Sherlock caught the direction of his glance, tugged the dressing gown a little closer, hiding little. “Also that,” he said, with a wry smile.

At least Moriarty’s motivations were finally clear.

“H’s here to find your weaknesses too.”

“Of course he is. But I’m cleverer than him.”

“Don’t do it. You don’t have to do it.”

“I do.”

John took a breath. “Even if I can’t stand it? If I leave?”

Sherlock stopped pacing, eyes wide. “Now that’s coercion, John!”

“Will it stop you?”

“No.” Sherlock looked distressed, annoyed. “Don’t leave.”

John took a glance at the laptop. Moriarty was filling in the crossword, barely pausing for thought between clues. He remembered the smell of chlorine, the taste of blood in his mouth. Nothing that he was going to say would dissuade Sherlock from this.

There were things that you didn’t do. Out of decency, out of self respect, out of a sense of self preservation because they would always come back to hurt you. Taking someone strung out on another man, as the song put it, was one of those things. But John was desperate and Sherlock was aroused and anything denied to Moriarty tonight was something won.

He half expected Sherlock to pull away from the tentative hand round his waist, the other across the back of his neck to tilt his head down low enough to be kissed. But Sherlock, always stronger than he imagined, was instead pushing him back onto the bed, clambering lithely, fast, on top of him, kissing him fierce and unrestrained. The dressing gown was no hindrance to his own hands across the backs of hips and thighs, tugging Sherlock closer in, feeling him grind again John’s own erection. This was faster and harder than he’d anticipated and for a moment he wanted to pull away, but he was underneath and his own body was reacting as if this were the way it should be.

And at least it was his name that Sherlock was now murmuring between small bites at his neck, pulling back just long enough to attack his belt and trousers as if they personally offended him. No question but that Sherlock knew exactly where he was and with whom. So John tried hard not to think about exactly who this passion might rightly belong to, to push aside the feeling that he was doing something underhand. No-one took advantage of Sherlock; the idea was ridiculous.

Still, he wanted this quick and over, because Moriarty was still downstairs. Nothing subtle; not how he’d imagined things, but this wasn’t for him, this was to keep Sherlock safe. Spit moistened hands on each other, moving fast, and lips and teeth at necks hard enough that they’d both be showing this in the morning.

When the movement stopped, he thought at first that the man had done, but tension was still there, everywhere that they touched. And Sherlock had raised his head.

“Bedsprings.”

Moriarty was leaning against the doorpost, smiling. He had never looked less amused.

“I underestimated you, Doctor Watson. I thought you more...coy. I take it that argument failed.”

John uncurled his hands, let them fall limp. “Sherlock.” he said, quietly. Meaning something like “I really don’t like being underneath right now and could you please let go of my cock before you start talking to him.”

Fortunately Sherlock seemed to pick all that up from the single word. He sat up, shifted a leg over to free John, rested back on his heels. The dressing gown tangled behind him, disregarded. He took a moment to catch his breath.

“You’ll get your turn.”

“Do I look like someone who takes turns?” Moriarty’s voice was high, unstable. “You can do the pet any time. I’m a one night only deal.”

Sherlock seemed to have recovered his usual aplomb. “Very well. You can join us.”

John had managed to pull up his shorts by this point. He squeaked, much to his embarrassment. “Sherlock! This is my bed!”

“Yes. Mine is unsuitable and the couch is too small for the three of us.”

“You’re not actually going to do this.”

Sherlock sounded exasperated. “Have you listened to anything I’ve said in the last 30 minutes? Here with you, couch without you. Make up your mind.”

His voice softened slightly. “We’ll get back to this.”

Get back to it? John couldn’t even begin to count the number of ways in which that was offensive. Not to mention the possibility that Sherlock wouldn’t survive long enough to get back to anything. That decided him. That and not being able to bear the thought of them downstairs.

“I’m not leaving you alone with him.”

“Good.”

John closed the laptop, slid off the far end of the bed to put it out of the way on his chest of drawers. Moriarty had dropped the leather jacket,was still standing by the bed. This really wasn’t going to be a threesome; John had seldom felt less inclined to sex, even with Sherlock sprawled back on his duvet. But he wasn’t leaving. And afterwards he would have this out with Sherlock, properly, which might mean sex but was more likely to involve a lot of shouting and quite possibly his finding somewhere else to live.

He stood beside the chest of drawers, drawing a little comfort from the loaded gun in the third drawer down. Sherlock was intense on Moriarty. Moriarty had turned deliberately away from the detective, was looking at John.

“What is that he sees in you? You look dull enough to me.” He flashed a cold smile. “Still, let’s see if you’re any good.”

Two paces and he was in front of John, hand sliding out to his crotch. John batted it away. “Fuck off.”

“Be nice.” He tried again. John abruptly decided that he’d given enough warning. A grab at the offending wrist with a knee to the groin and Moriarty was face down on the bed, both arms twisted high up his back and his legs trapped by John’s own.

A bite of satisfaction at a skill well applied, then a twinge of guilt. He was messing up Sherlock’s night. He glanced up at Sherlock, knowing he was going to have to back off, hoping he’d done enough to keep the man off him.

Sherlock looked...speculative. Then smug. “Hold it there.” John was happy to comply. Moriarty wasn’t struggling. Wouldn’t do him any good to start.

Here was Sherlock, crawling on hands and knees across the bed towards him , and God, wasn’t that a sight! Settling himself with one knee either side of Moriarty’s shoulders. Sitting on the man’s neck, hands running slowly from his shoulders, up the twisted arms, across to the hands holding them flat against the back, all the way up to John’s own shoulders. Long fingers around his neck, as Sherlock pulled him in, leant forward to kiss him.

Nothing like the rush of earlier. This was slow, considered. Far more Sherlock. John resisted the oddness for a moment, then gave in, kissed him back. This was more of the way he’d imagined their first time might be, if he could ignore the man underneath. Sherlock’s hand was across his jaw, pulling it firmly to where he wanted it. John missed having his own hands free, acutely; there were half a dozen places where he could think of them to be.

Still, there was something not quite right...he identified it with a stab of annoyance. Sherlock was playing to his audience, as usual, and it wasn’t John. He might at some point get at least fifty percent of his flatmate’s attention, but it wasn’t going to be tonight.

Somehow he must have huffed exasperation with Sherlock’s tongue still halfway down his throat because Sherlock pulled back. For a moment he expected an apology, an explanation, maybe even something defensive. But this was Sherlock, who instead pressed warm lips up against his ear to murmur, quiet enough that there was no chance of Moriarty hearing, “We’ve got him, John!”

Then he pulled away, back onto the bed, cross-legged, facing John and his captive. Jerked a chin upwards and John tugged Moriarty up to face him.

John couldn’t see the man’s face. Sherlock could. Sherlock looked entirely satisfied.

“My apologies, Jim. We neglected to ask you for a safe word. Want to give me one now? Or maybe I should deduce it?”

John kept his legs tight against Moriarty’s, along the edge of the bed. Sweat was streaking the black t-shirt under the twisted shoulders. Uncomfortable, but not in pain. Not while he stayed limp.

“Ah, Sherlock.” Moriarty’s voice was still gleeful. “I love it when you play rough.” His voice dropped, disappointed “You’re only playing though. You won’t let him see what you really want to do. Still pretending to be a good guy.”

Sherlock’s head snapped up, startled, then he was laughing. “You really haven’t been paying attention to John at all, have you? Idiot. I don’t keep pets.”

His eyes went up to meet John’s.

“Hurt him.”

John twisted the right arm. A wide, clear smile from Sherlock. “More.”

He complied.

A few heartbeats, then Sherlock again. “More.”

The shoulder was now very close to dislocating. He held it there, listening to the whimpering. He’d never done this before, not like this. Pain imposed necessarily, to incapacitate, or professionally, to mend. Not to hurt. He wondered, briefly, what it said about him, that he was so willingly Sherlock’s tool in this. He didn’t care. Moriarty deserved far worse.

Moriarty wasn’t silent any more, but he wasn’t talking. Sherlock was still, eyes wide. Still, John couldn’t help noticing, hard.

“More.”

John caught his glance. Just confirming. Sherlock understood anatomy as well as he did. Without pause he resettled his hand over the arm, feeling out exactly where he needed to jerk.

“Stop.”

Moriarty’s voice, low, close to unrecognisable. John waited.

“You’ve made your point. No need to overdo it. Get his hands off me.”

There was a pause. Long enough for John to discover that he felt entirely comfortable with whatever Sherlock decided, for Sherlock to read that, and to smile at him.

“You can stop hurting our guest.” Silky tone. “This is, apparently, not what he came for.”

Sherlock had not said let him go. John eased off, back to mere discomfort, compensating a little for the soreness in the right shoulder that he’d doubtless caused.

“Shall we find something that pleases you better?” Sherlock’s voice didn’t slide up and down in a deliberate facade of madness. But, John thought, there wasn’t much to choose between the words they used when they spoke to each other.

Sherlock had bent forward, was... oh. Undoing the narrow black belt, then the buttoned jeans. Lifting his head to smile at John, not at the man he was holding, then pulling himself onto his knees to kiss John over the other man’s shoulder, one hand around the back of his head, the other still somewhere down near Moriarty’s groin.

Which should not have the effect that it was having, really it shouldn’t, but John couldn’t help it; Sherlock’s lingering kiss, the fingers curling in his hair, the man he’d been scared of all night helpless underneath him, all that boasting come to nothing. He rested his chin on Moriarty’s shoulder and relaxed into the third kissing session of the night.

When he felt himself stir, he did try to pull back, but he was still trapping Moriarty’s legs with his, and short of letting the man loose there seemed little he could do. Sherlock, of course, had read the small movement, was running a hot tongue up his cheek to murmur in his ear.

“Shall we show him that we’re more than he can handle?”

We. He liked that ‘we’. Yes. Part of him simply wanted to be cold and vicious. Not a good idea, because... oh shit. He manoeuvred his own mouth up to Sherlock’s ear.

“What about that phone?”

Sherlock spoke aloud. “Want to go home, yet, Jim?”

“Are you actually trying to kill me with boredom here? Because I think it might just work.”

“Let’s wake things up a bit, then.”

John wasn’t sure where the condoms and lube appeared from. He was more interested in where they were going. He should have guessed that when Sherlock said ‘we’ it inevitably meant ‘you doing the actual work.’

He thought maybe he ought to protest, just for form’s sake, but Moriarty was listening. United front, and all that. Besides, with Sherlock brushing up behind him, firm hands removing his trousers yet again, he found himself uninclined to object. Moriarty had asked for this in pretty much every way possible, including, almost incidentally, directly and verbally.

He’d never had anything but well mannered sex before. Even when things had got a bit rough on occasion, it had been second nature to be sure, all the time, that everyone was still having fun. The habit of a lifetime turned out to be remarkably easy to shed; he just needed to remember the weight of that coat across his shoulders. You could hurt a man, like this. He did his best to do so.

Sherlock had returned to his sprawl across the headboard, was watching Moriarty, expressionless. John was intensely glad that Sherlock wasn’t watching him, right now. He had no idea what he looked like; didn’t want to know. Just wanted to fuck the man beneath him, arms still twisted, until he begged to stop. And then some more. ‘You don’t get Sherlock’ he muttered to himself, silently, in time with his movements. ‘You don’t get anything except my bloody cock up your bloody arse.’

The bastard was disappointingly resilient. Not silent, not after a while, but not verbal. It was the squeals that did it in the end, pushing him over the edge into a surprisingly satisfying orgasm. When he looked up this time Sherlock was watching him, looking as smug as if the man had been responsible for that particular result himself. It was Sherlock; maybe he considered that he had.

Sherlock tore open a second condom wrapper, came round to take John’s place. John let go of the arms, grateful for some relief there. Moriarty’s shoulders must be seriously aching by now. He followed Sherlock’s jerk of the head to his place on the bed. Watching was part of this; he understood that.

Not that it was easy, because Sherlock was watching him over Moriarty’s shoulder, and damn, the man was gorgeous. Even fucking someone else. Fucking someone else while making bedroom eyes at him. When this was done he was going to make sure that Sherlock made good on all those unspoken promises. For the moment he just tried to watch Moriarty for at least half the time.

The man was hurting. He might also have been enjoying himself. It was difficult to tell. Certainly he had his eyes screwed shut and was making no attempt to keep quiet. Sherlock was no gentler than John had been. John watched the horrible little screwed up face and sincerely hoped that the yelps represented a great deal of pain.

And then he got distracted because Sherlock was panting, eyes wide, and there was absolutely no way that he was going to let the man do that with anyone but him ever again. He was pretty sure that his expression must have said as much because Sherlock was laughing as he bucked into the man underneath, shuddered to a standstill.

When he spoke his voice was steady. “Come and hold him again.”

John climbed off the bed, returned to his previous position. Sherlock settled himself on the edge of the bed next to them, reached out and curled his hand around Moriarty’s limp cock.

“You have all three of the burgundy mugs in here.” he complained.

John shrugged, awkwardly, around the man he was holding down. “Do I? There are plenty of others.”

“I like those.” Without looking down he began to jerk his hand, smoothly.

“I thought you liked the caterpillar one.” With anyone else it would have been a game. With Sherlock it probably was what he was actually thinking about right now.

“That one feels nice, but the coffee goes cold nearly a minute faster.”

“We could always get some more of the burgundy ones.”

“Do that.”

“You could always do it yourself.”

“I’m busy tomorrow.”

“Fine. I’ll do it.”

The hand had speeded up. John wondered what expression Moriarty might have now. Sherlock was still looking round his bedroom.

“This is more practical for sex than my room. Even with two people.”

“Two people,” John said, definitely, “is what there are going to be.”

“Mmm. We seem to be,” he paused, twisted his wrist, let go, “done here.”

“Not on the...oh, never mind.” John was going to have to wash everything in here about six times anyway before he could face sleeping in the room again “Can we throw him out now?”

Sherlock stretched, smiled. “Why not?”

Moriarty had recovered the power of speech, but John lost patience halfway through the first insinuated threat. His hand wrapped around the man’s mouth as they physically dragged him down the stairs and dumped him outside the door.

John closed it and leaned against it, laughing.

“We shouldn’t have done that, should we?” he tried, when he had breath again.

“No.” Sherlock was grinning like a Cheshire Cat.

“He’s too dangerous to fuck with.”

“Yes.”

“There’s going to be trouble.”

“Undoubtedly.”

“We are not doing that again.”

Sherlock paused. “Not unless he comes back.”

John took a breath. “Sherlock!”

“Not,” Sherlock conceded, “without you there.”

“You just like trouble.”

“You like it more.” He started up the stairs. “He comes back, we’ll have some other ways to see him off. Better get in practice.”

John snorted, followed. “So you’ll sleep with me as rehearsal for Moriarty.”

“Best to be thoroughly prepared.”

“Sure. Did you find out any of his weaknesses?”

“He underestimates you. Constantly.”

John thought about that one. Being a weakness of a psychopath was probably not a comfortable place to be.

But, hell, being a psychopath, fucked over and dumped probably wasn’t such a great place either. He’d rather be in here with Sherlock than out there in the cold.

“Preparation,” he said firmly, “can start in the morning. Have you seen the state of my room? Right now I’m claiming the couch.”

  
 **Part 2- Nobody Dead**   


 

A quick shake to John’s shoulder woke him. He was on his back, on the couch, the spare blanket tangled around his waist. For a moment he remained still, remembering.

“There’s a great deal to be done.” Sherlock, fully dressed, was kneeling on the floor dusting Moriarty’s discarded jacket for prints. “Get up.”

John smiled at the abruptness. Morning after... “I’m sure you’ve got time for a moment’s dalliance.”

“Neither the time nor the inclination. Everything in your room with either blood or semen on it, which is all your bedding and probably a fair number of your clothes, needs to be in the washing machine before I call Lestrade.”

Damn the man’s single mindedness. John reluctantly sat up. “Fine. Unfinished business, though, you and I.”

“Unfinished?” Sherlock didn’t raise his head. “Orgasms were reached. That does traditionally bring things to a close.”

John glanced at the clock. Seven am. He’d had at most three hours sleep, and Sherlock was being awkward.

“Not those particular orgasms, no. Fussy of me, I know but I’m holding out for something that actually involves physical contact with you.”

Sherlock half-shrugged. “It will become difficult to explain delay convincingly to Lestrade. Bedding. Now.”

John sighed, pulled himself to his feet. “Talk about mixed bloody signals,” he grumbled quietly. Then aloud, “Why Lestrade? You’re not going to tell him the truth.”

“I want Moriarty back at the top of his most wanted list. I’ll need his resources. Move.”

When John finished dumping everything in the washing machine, Sherlock had him handle things. The light switch by the stairs, wiped clean, needed several sets of smeared and overlapping prints. The soft leather jacket, cleaned, was to John’s dismay now his.

“I gave it to you last week. You don’t know why; it’s not your style at all. So far you’ve just tried it on and hung it away, so do that.”

“Can’t we just throw it out? Or let Lestrade have it?”

“It was cold in here last night. There’s no good reason for him to have taken it off. And I might need it. Bring your gun down here; I’ll find somewhere a little more effective to conceal it. Even someone as stupid as Anderson might think to look in your sock drawer.”

It was another half hour before Sherlock pronounced himself satisfied with the forensics. “Moriarty woke me, coming up the stairs. You heard voices, came downstairs from your room. He never went near it.”

“Understood.”

“Right. You can ring the Yard, in an excess of civil responsibility. I wouldn’t have bothered.”

Lestrade certainly seemed to take the reappearance of Jim Moriarty seriously. He turned up with Anderson and a couple of assistants within thirty minutes. John watched Sherlock’s display of exasperation at their unnecessary presence with well-concealed amusement.

“No bombs, Inspector. No guns. He broke in, we threw him out. What on earth Anderson thinks he’s going to gain from fingerprinting the kitchen worktop is beyond me. Can’t you buy him a rattle or something, keep him occupied?”

“We’ll need prints from both of you, for elimination purposes.” Lestrade was matter of fact.

Sherlock huffed. “This is a waste of time. He didn’t touch anything in the room. You might get something usable from the front door and the stairwell, if you’re very lucky and he was feeling particularly careless. I would be astonished if you did.”

“Still, prints, please.”

Sherlock gave in with bad grace. John provided a neat set of inked prints, quietly. Lestrade was watching him.

“So you overpowered him and dumped him in the street? Why the hell didn’t you call the police at that point?”

Sherlock had explained about the phone. John shook his head. “Too risky. He’d have known, and he’d have acted. His rules.”

“Did he get hurt?”

Memory flashed, and John pushed it aside. “No. I twisted his arm around behind his back and we pushed him out. That was all.”

“So what did he say? Why had he come?”

John shrugged. “He didn’t say anything to me. Sherlock passed on the threat about the phone.”

“Right.” Lestrade looked entirely unconvinced, was making no effort to hide it. John managed to feel genuinely aggrieved about that. No matter that they were both lying, it would have been nice to think that the Inspector was inclined to believe them, given how much he’d got from Sherlock over the years.

They watched the forensic team working, Sherlock snapping at them whenever they touched anything he considered an experiment. Finally Anderson stood up, addressed Lestrade.

“Done here. I’ll move upstairs.”

“Not relevant.” Sherlock was casually blocking the stairway. “He didn’t go up there.”

“Procedure.”

“Nosiness. You’ve no business in John’s bedroom, Anderson. Unless you’re fishing for an invite up there? I don’t think you’re his type.”

Andersen bristled. Lestrade sighed. “Leave it. Take what you’ve got back to the lab. I’ll take a glance upstairs.” He quirked a brow at John. “If that’s all right?”

John could hardly demur. He led the way, as Sherlock hustled the others downstairs. Lestrade took one look at the stripped mattress and frowned. “Laundry day?”

“Thought I might as well, since we had to wait in for you.”

“Right. You’re pretty cool about all this, aren’t you?”

John shrugged. “It wasn’t particularly traumatic. He didn’t have a gun.”

“Yes. And Sherlock, with his unrivalled experience of crime scenes, didn’t think to stop you washing everything before we got here?”

“It isn’t a crime scene.” Sherlock had come up the stairs behind them. “Bit of breaking and entering is hardly a serious crime anyway, and nothing happened up here.”

John caught the slightest of emphasis on the “nothing”, frowned at Sherlock. Lestrade had caught it too. He glanced between the men, sat down on the bed.

“Bloody hell, John, what do you think we’d do, DNA test the sheets?” He was shaking his head. “Nobody gives a damn.”

John found it hard to believe that anyone would be quite so blase about the night’s events. He didn’t reply.

“I don’t care which bedroom Sherlock came out of last night. You’re both adults and it’s your damn house.”

“The problem with police reports is that the police get to read them.” Sherlock sounded positively bad tempered.

Lestrade stood up again. “OK. I can see that you might not want this all over the section; I’m certainly not going to make you change your statements.” He nodded stiffly at John. “Any breach of your privacy was entirely unintentional and won’t go any further. I’d better be getting back.”

John returned to the living room after showing the inspector out. Glared at a smug Sherlock.

“That was not a nice thing to do.”

“To you or to him?”

“Both. You had that set up from the beginning.”

“Yes.”

“You could have warned me!”

“You’re not that good an actor. As it was your reactions were perfect.”

“And the purpose was?”

“Distraction. Our story had some large gaps. I knew that Lestrade would have unanswered questions. He won’t be asking them now.”

“No.” John collapsed into the armchair. “Damn, Sherlock, I didn’t expect to be keeping this entirely to ourselves, but I thought you could maybe hold off on telling people that we’re shagging at least until we’ve done it.”

He blinked at Sherlock’s uncomfortable expression, came to a late, reluctant conclusion. “We’re not shagging, are we?”

“It’s not something...” Sherlock tailed off.

“Last night.” John hesitated. “Last night was all him, then.”

“You weren’t intended to get the impression that we... It was self indulgent of me.” Sherlock sounded genuinely regretful.

“Christ, Sherlock!” John pulled himself up onto his feet. “Yes. Yes it was.”

He didn’t trust himself to say more. He’d known at the start, he told himself. Wishful thinking, after that, and Sherlock randy enough to fuck anyone. But back to the cold morning and it was “not interested” again. And he couldn’t switch things off like that. Not just like that.

The flat seemed suddenly claustrophobic. Unsafe. He needed to get out.

“I’ll get the shopping.”

“Biscuits. Ginger ones.” Sherlock was reconstituting a disturbed pile of newspapers.

John was still muttering about what Sherlock could do with the effing biscuits as he reached the bottom of the stairs. The doorbell was shockingly loud in the empty hallway. He yanked it open, bad tempered, half expecting Lestrade back with the questions he’d failed to ask earlier.

“Mycroft. Er, hello. Sherlock’s in. I’m just going out...”

The furled umbrella raised itself to the horizontal to thwart his forward momentum, dropped before he could take offence.

“If it wouldn’t be too inconvenient, perhaps you could postpone your errand for a few minutes? I would very much appreciate the opportunity to talk to both yourself and my brother.”

John bit down on his instinct to refuse. He had no quarrel with Mycroft and with Moriarty out there and malevolent they couldn’t afford to alienate their few allies.

“You’d better come up then.”

Sherlock grimaced as his brother entered the living room.

“What do you want?”

“You should get more sleep.” Mycroft perched on the settee. “It would make you better tempered.”

“An improved temper is not high on my Christmas list this year. What will make you leave?”

Mycroft extracted a memory stick from his top pocket. “If one of you would be so kind?”

“Here.” Sherlock plucked it out of his brother’s fingers, pulled John’s laptop across the desk. “Don’t you have that woman for this kind of thing?”

“Not today.” He raised the slightest of eyebrows at John, who realised that no-one would play host if he didn’t.

“Coffee?”

“Tea, please, White. No sugar. I believe there is a teapot in the cupboard to the right of the sink.”

“Coffee.” Sherlock snapped, fingers flicking over the keys. “Shouldn’t government files be encrypted these days?”

“This is more in the nature of a personal offering.”

John dug out the long unused teapot, rinsed it through. He supposed that he ought to warm it as well. Mycroft clearly wasn’t a man for a teabag dunked in a mug. From the other room he heard Sherlock’s annoyed hiss.

“This really is beneath you, Mycroft.”

“Requested and authorised by your friends in New Scotland Yard, eleven weeks ago. I merely keep an eye on it.”

John left the kettle to boil, stuck his head back into the living room to see what Sherlock was objecting to. The screen, tilted towards him by his flat mate, showed their front door and the floor above, lit by the nearby street light. The label read 02:13, today’s date.

“Shit,” John said, succinctly. “Lestrade’s got this?”

“The Inspector will have discovered by now that the surveillance camera malfunctioned last night. He will, no doubt, blame your guest.”

Mycroft’s voice was still calm. “Perhaps you might forward the video a little, Sherlock? Two thirty seven is I believe the first point of any significance.”

Sherlock paused the screen. “How, dear brother, is that going to be illuminating? You have watched this. We hardly need to. Can we move on to whatever will make you go away?”

“I want to see it.” John was pleased at the steadiness of his voice. “I’d like to know exactly what it shows.”

Mycroft smiled at him approvingly. Sherlock sighed, started the recording again.

2:37 Jim Moriarty walks confidently up to the door of 221B, slides a key into the lock and opens it. The footage is better than your average CCTV; even from the side, then back, he is clearly recognisable. The tailored leather jacket fits loose over his shoulders, snug over his hips.

The door closes behind him. Nothing happens.

The kettle boiled and John made the drinks. He and Sherlock stood in front of the desk with their coffee mugs, watching the minutes tick by on the screen. Mycroft sipped his tea on the couch. No-one spoke.

2:49 The light goes on in the first floor. Nothing can be seen through the curtains.

There was a long, long wait as the minutes ticked over. Mycroft did not suggest fast forwarding. He had, John thought, the family sense of the dramatic.

3:23 The hall light comes on. A few seconds later the door opens; Sherlock and John manoeuvre the limp man between them through the doorway. They swing him back, then forward and release him. He goes down hard, on his face.

John repressed an automatic wince.

The door shuts.

For a full minute the figure doesn’t move. Then he slowly pushes himself up onto his knees. Another pause, then he uses the wall for help as he staggers to his feet, pulls the clothing round his knees up to his waist and fumbles with his belt for some time.

He spreads his palms out under the street light; even from the distance, the camera picks up the darkness of bloody lacerations on his right. Arms bare, he shivers noticeably as he pulls the phone from his pocket with his uninjured hand, talks into it, still leaning against the wall. When he does start walking it is more of a stumble as he moves slowly out of view of the camera.

“I suppose you didn’t find out anything useful, like where he went.” Sherlock’s voice was aggressively unapologetic.

“No.”

John felt that he ought to feel something about Moriarty; satisfaction, guilt, something. He didn’t. Instead he remembered how Sherlock had looked, watching Moriarty and himself on top. How Sherlock had straddled the man’s neck to kiss him. Sherlock had wanted him, then; not just any warm body in Moriarty’s shadow but him. Could therefore do so again.

But Sherlock was cool, not easily stirred to desire. He had to figure out how.

“Have we lost you, John?” Mycroft enquired politely.

“My brother is awaiting an appropriate show of contrition, I believe.” Sherlock was amused. “Everyone seems to underestimate you.’

And damn, but that was a hint of last night’s smile. Sherlock liked that idea. He didn’t want John nice. Ordinary. Well behaved. John smiled back at him briefly, just letting him know, on the remote chance that he hadn’t already figured it out, that he was fine with that.

Mycroft’s umbrella tapped twice on the leg of the couch.

“I am,” he announced calmly, “concerned.”

“I really don’t care.” Sherlock pocketed the memory stick.

“Hmm.” Mycroft placed his mug carefully on the nearest table, spoke to John.

“I am somewhat disappointed. I was hoping that you were exerting a positive influence on my brother. I recognise that you are unlikely to welcome being told that he is not an entirely positive influence on you. Nonetheless.”

“You’re right.” John straightened his back. “I don’t welcome it. And believe me, Moriarty doesn’t deserve your protection.”

Mycroft waved a hand in dismissal of that reasoning. “I object to bear baiting not because it gives pain to the bear but because it gives pleasure to the spectators.”

Sherlock snorted his derision. “Seventeenth century puritanism hardly constitutes a compelling argument. Do you have anything worthwhile to say at all? We are both are busy.”

“Very well.” Mycroft rise to his feet gracefully, spoke to John directly again. “I told you at our first meeting that I worried about my brother. You may now have some better understanding of my reasons.

“You are in no mood to be argued with. But I would request that when you reflect on this conversation you ask yourself, and him, one question. Why is nobody dead today?”

He twirled his umbrella, pulled himself up even straighter. “Thank you for the tea. Shall I see myself out?”

John was unimpressed. No, annoyed. Mycroft knew nothing, save what he’d seen on that tape. Of course Sherlock was dangerous, to the wrong people. So was he. This unspoken assumption that he was blindly following when he should be patiently shepherding- he made a decision, spoke to Sherlock.

“Moriarty will have the house watched, I presume.”

“Doubtless.”

“Good.” Civilly to Mycroft. “One moment, and I’ll come down with you. I still have the shopping to do.”

He took the stairs up to his room two and three at a time. Time to show everyone that he wasn’t a passenger on this particular ride.

Sherlock’s slow smile as he walked back into the living room was approval. Mycroft’s pursed lips were most definitely not. Two out of two, then.

John squared his shoulders as he opened the front door, acutely conscious of the third, assumed observer. He’d thought it would be tight over the shoulders but in fact it wasn’t a bad fit at all. Not his style, maybe, but he was tired of everyone thinking that they knew him. Dull, Moriarty had said. And Mycroft had neatly classified him as a good influence. Hell with both of them. Sherlock had smiled.

The text came through as John was loading the conveyor belt at Tesco’s. He patted the unfamiliar pockets for a moment, retrieved the phone.

Come home now. SH.

The woman in front of him was hunting in her bag for her purse. He tapped at the screen.

15 min.

The reply was almost instantaneous.

Now.

For all John knew, abandoning your shopping at the till would cause a bomb alert. One minute, he reckoned, smiled briefly at the cashier as he started to pack bags. Sometimes urgent with Sherlock was life and death. Mostly it was impatience. He hoped it was the latter, but he flagged down a taxi for the half mile home anyway.

Shopping got dumped, quietly, at the foot of the stairs. He could hear nothing from above. Slowly, carefully up the stairs. Sherlock was curled up on the couch, eyes closed.

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes.” Sherlock uncurled himself, stood up. “You were slow.”

“Slow and with shopping. Ginger biscuits.”

“Never mind biscuits.” Sherlock was close. Hands gripped his shoulders and he let himself get backed up against the high bookcase. Hot-and-cold was hot again, it seemed. Better than fine; he lifted his chin up to Sherlock, slid his palms flat against the man’s rear, tugging him closer still. Sherlock kissed him briefly, tongue flickering, then dipped his head further to mouth his neck. The lines of the shelves dug harder into his back as Sherlock pushed forward, hands tight on his upper arms. John tried pushing back, grinding himself in a rhythm against the hardness at the other man’s groin. His thoughts were blurring fast into little more than ‘want’ and ‘yes’ and he could hear his breathing faster and louder. Sherlock’s mouth was all teeth, his face nuzzling insistently into the leather at John’s neck.

Fuck. John’s hands clamped hard on Sherlock’s hips, pushed him back and away. Came up to slam his palms into Sherlock’s chest with the same result. Sherlock took a further pace back, scowled at him,

“What?”

“Does it still smell like him? Is that what this is about?”

“Him and you both.” Sherlock’s voice was cooler. “Problem?”

It damn well wasn’t going to be. John shrugged the jacket off and over a chair, pulled his jumper over his head and unbuttoned his shirt. Sherlock had taken a third step back. Watching.

When he stood again after taking off his shoes and started unbuckling his belt he could hear Sherlock’s breath turn harsher. By the time he was completely naked he was pretty sure that he had the man’s full attention. Him, not bloody Moriarty.

“Now,” he growled, “we’ll try the sodding jacket.” He swept the black leather up again, put it on, sank his hands deep in the pockets and tried a scowl of his own.

As the silence lengthened, and Sherlock said nothing, did nothing, he thought he’d overdone it. He must, after all, look bloody ridiculous. But as he started to wonder how he could possibly retrieve the situation Sherlock finally moved, in a direction that he had in no way anticipated.

John’s hands clenched inside the jacket pockets and for a few moments he tried to just let himself feel. Nothing teasing about Sherlock on his knees; the assault on his cock was direct, an hand under his balls, the other tight around a fistful of leather from the hem of the jacket. But John couldn’t help thinking about what was happening and he wasn’t sure that he liked this.

Not this, obviously, because he was only human and Sherlock knew exactly what he was doing and no question but that he was going to come extremely hard very very shortly.

But Sherlock had pushed him about the bloody jacket and he’d pushed back hard because between the other two he was at serious risk of getting crushed, and because he was getting the strong impression that Sherlock liked him showing his teeth occasionally. And that was all it was meant to be; just a “deal with me, Sherlock.” Not “on your knees.” Not, God help him, claiming the lead. Surely Sherlock, of all people, couldn’t have misread him like this.

No time to do anything about it right now, because his thoughts were breaking up under Sherlock’s mouth and hand and he wasn’t actually in charge at all, not of anything but possibly standing up and probably not that for long. Sherlock hadn’t paused for a second, didn’t pause now, pulling him over the brink of climax, pulling everything out of him, so that he had not choice but to grab the back of the chair to keep himself upright, gasping swearwords as his body spasmed.

By the time he opened his eyes again, Sherlock was back on his feet, waiting. That was the time to say “Thank you, that was amazing” or something of the sort. But he was tired and emotional and he really couldn’t handle what he was terrified might be Sherlock’s expectations, so what he actually said was “You’re not pulling some sub crap on me, are you?”

Sherlock laughed rather louder than John felt was really necessary. “How should I know!” he protested. “You’re being crazy about all of this; me, him, the bloody jacket.”

Sherlock didn’t looked any less amused. “Yes.”

“Ok, then. Don’t be surprised if I don’t always follow what’s going on. One of us is not a genius, remember.”

“I’m hardly likely to forget that, John. You do provide me with plenty of reminders.” He stepped closer, voice lowering. “You’ll hold your corner against any of us, John. Mycroft. Moriarty. Me. It’s an admirable trait. But dominate others- no. Not on your own, anyway. You and me together; that’s different. That’s why they’re so nervous.”

Before John had time to fully consider that statement, slim hands were sliding across his chest, under the leather, digging into the tender flesh round his nipples.

“Right now, you’re going to let me take charge.”

John took a breath. He might be sated but Sherlock was not. Sherlock was getting whatever he wanted, after that.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“Upstairs, then.”

Sherlock clearly knew what he wanted. The free standing mirror moved across to one side of the bed. John, who had tried a kiss or two, was firmly told to sit down and wait. He sat on the end of his bare mattress and watched Sherlock undoing his shirt. Remembered something.

“No-one’s dead,” he said.

“No.” Sherlock unbuttoned his cuffs.

“Do I need to ask you why?”

“You can probably work it out.”

Something to do, while he waited.

“Right. Moriarty’s not dead because he set up protection.”

“Yes.”

“We’re not dead because he didn’t want to kill us. I wouldn’t have given much for our chances if he’d brought a gun. Or company.”

“Yes.” Sherlock tugged the shirt off and John contemplated the muscles under that smooth skin. He’d been told to sit and wait.

“Everyone else... he could have killed people, to punish us. He didn’t.”

“No.” The sound of the belt sliding through the hooks, dropping to the floor. John was getting a little excited again.

“So. He’s too proud to admit that we beat him.”

“Wrong. He’d kill for the smallest slight.”

Sherlock was tugging down his trousers and John was halfway up from the bed.

“Sit down, John. A little patience.”

“OK.” John tried to concentrate on the conversation. It had become a deal more difficult.

“Maybe he wasn’t annoyed by what happened, then.”

“Exactly.”

“So he’s a masochist then? He liked being humiliated and hurt.”

Sherlock tutted at him. “Jim Moriarty? Completely wrong. He found the violence stimulating, but that’s not the answer.”

He was naked now, was setting out a tube of lubricant, top removed, a condom wrapper on the bed. John found that his breathing had quickened.

“Over here, facing the mirror. Elbows on the bed. That will do.”

John couldn’t help but notice that he’d been carefully positioned in precisely the place along the edge of the bed where he’d pinioned Moriarty last night. He decided not to care.

Sherlock was watching him in the mirror now. “Come on, John. Don’t get distracted.”

“You’re a little distracting.”

“Focus.”

A lubricated finger found him, and he gasped. “Why would he like losing?”

“He wouldn’t.” Sherlock was smooth, delicate. Then he wasn’t.

“Ouch! I give up. Tell me.”

“You’re not reasoning logically. Think. And don’t be a baby. That didn’t hurt.”

“I don’t like you very much,” John muttered. And louder. “I suppose he thought that he’d won, then.”

“Yes.” Whatever Sherlock did with his fingers at that point met with John’s approval. He damn well hoped it wasn’t intended as a reward for not being totally stupid.

“Come on. I’m not going to do anything more till you’ve got the answer.”

Bastard. He tried to think. It was extremely difficult.

“What could he possibly have won? We were pretty brutal...” he stopped. “You‘re meant to be the good guy. He’s trying to take you over to the dark side.”

“That’s a little allegorical for you, John.”

“Cultural reference. You wouldn’t get it. That’s it, though, isn’t it? He thinks he was corrupting you. And Mycroft thinks that too.”

He’d either got the right answer or Sherlock had got bored waiting, because things started happening again. There was a short period during which Sherlock was quite intensely interested in finding out just how accommodating his flatmate was prepared to be, and John was mainly interested in letting his flatmate have the benefit of a great number of interesting curses that he’d picked up while soldiering while not actually outright telling him to stop.

“Take a minute.” Sherlock disengaged. “Get your heart-rate down.” He sounded a little ragged, himself. “Don’t move,” and he was off to the bathroom.

John stood up to ease his back, stretched. They should at least have put a sheet on the mattress.

“That’s not still,” Sherlock called through. John could hear the tap running.

“Don’t push it,” he called back, found something to put on the bed, sat down on it, carefully. He considered himself co-operating, not obedient. His heart rate wasn’t dropping much. Not surprising; the condom packet was still there.

“How long?” Sherlock was back with clean hands and a filthy grin. “Two years?”

“Over three.”

“Really? Despite that appalling fuss, you don’t seem too out of practice.”

John was still considering his response to that, and to being tugged back impatiently into position, when Sherlock neatly ripped open the condom wrapper and he decided conversation could wait.

When he registered the sound of a text to Sherlock’s phone he naturally assumed that Sherlock would leave it, being, as the man was, about as otherwise occupied as someone could possibly get.

But no, it turned out that Sherlock still had a hand free, and the phone was a short reach away. Sherlock glanced at the text, looked up and contemplated him in the mirror, lifted the phone, and...

“Did you just take a... Oh, God, did you just text a photo of us, Sherlock? You did, didn’t you!”

“Don’t worry. You looked great. All flustered and mussed up. It suits you.”

Sherlock was giving him that smile again in the mirror, moving against him teasingly, one hand sliding everywhere over his back, up under the jacket he’d forgotten that he was still wearing...

“Moriarty! You sent it to him!”

Sherlock bent forward, warm across his back, to show him the screen. A text;

Have you fucked him in it yet?

“Rude not to respond.” Sherlock pulled back again, nudged his thighs a little further apart and started to move slowly forwards and in.

Before John recovered enough to say anything the phone rang again.

And rang. A call this time. Sherlock dropped it on John’s back, stabbed at a button. Didn’t stop moving. Familiar voice on speakerphone.

“Oh, Sherlock. I’m flattered. A little roleplay, all about me. Tell me, is there anything he won’t do if you tell him to?”

“Not enough data yet.” Sherlock was smiling at John.

“And you’re fucking him right now. You could let me have a video feed, you know. So much better than sound.”

“Use your imagination.”

“Pleeeeease?”

“What makes you think you deserve it?” Sherlock raised a finger at John. Hush. Don’t protest.

“Do you have any idea how much that jacket cost?” John could hear the pout. “You gave it to your pet, and now he’s getting it filthy. Give me video, and I’ll let you keep it.”

“The jacket?”

“The pet.”

God, now they were playing at a double act. Moriarty was threatening to kill him, and Sherlock was hard inside him and John wanted to hit someone.

“That was naughty, Jim. Time out.” Sherlock pressed a key. “Mute,” he told John.

“Turn the damn thing off!”

Sherlock was watching himself in the mirror now, eyes wide, breathing fast, didn’t answer. And what he was doing felt so damn good, nails sliding across John’s spine. John ought to bloody well insist. This should be just him and Sherlock.

Except that maybe there wasn’t any him and Sherlock. Not without Moriarty. Sherlock must have caught his expression.

“You and me. And him. It’s not a triangle, John. It’s lines of battle, and without him there’s no fight.”

He was starting to pant. “Here.”

The phone dropped onto the mattress. “Mute’s second button down, right. He’s hooked. Play him or kill it, I don’t care.”

“Liar,” John said, unsteadily. “You want me to play.”

Sherlock’s grin was all the response he needed.

So here he was over on the bed, on his elbows, with the phone brushing against his hand. and Sherlock shagging him from behind as unselfconscious as if they’d been at it for months. And Moriarty, hooked. He waited a moment for inspiration, flicked the button off.

“Still there, Jim?”

Silence.

“Three, two, one.” He pressed mute again. Arched his back against Sherlock’s movements for a few thrusts.

Again.

“Still there, Jim?”

“Give the phone back to Daddy now. The grown-ups want to talk.”

“Three, two, one.” Off.

God, Sherlock looked good in the mirror, dark-eyed and open mouthed. John left it a little longer this time.

“Still there, Jim?”

“Bitch.”

That would do. He was getting to be an expert on getting them to deal with him, he thought. Though “them” wasn’t fair. Moriarty was a monster. Sherlock was just Sherlock.

He’d thought he’d heard a slight slurring in the voice. “Bleeding stopped yet? I hope you’re not drinking alcohol with those painkillers.”

“You’re still dull, Doctor Watson. Even in my clothes.”

Sherlock laughed at that one. His grip around John’s hips was noticeably tighter. Not long now. John dropped subtlety. He wasn’t going to win wordgames.

“Next time we’ll keep all your clothes to play with, Jim. We’ll have our fun and then dump you naked and bloody in the Soho back streets, without the phone. Now sod off. We’re busy.”

He hung up, grinned at Sherlock.

“Yes, we are.” And Sherlock must have been holding back until that point, because everything got a bit out of control.

 

John was still flat out on the bed when the doorbell rang.

“Who the hell?”

“Lestrade.” Sherlock was heading towards the bathroom. “Answer it.’

Sure. Stinking of sweat and sex. Damn. John pulled some clean clothes on, ran his hands through his hair and headed downstairs, stopping to splash water on his face from the tap in the kitchen and scrub it dry with a random teatowel.

“Inspector. Come in.”

“Want help with those?”

Oh God, the shopping bags, still where he’d dumped them. “Er, yes. Thanks.”

Halfway up the stairs he remembered that his clothes must still be strewn over the living room floor. This was turning into a farce. No wonder Sherlock had disappeared.

“The place is a mess,” he warned.

“I was here a couple of hours ago.” Lestrade reminded him. “How much worse can it have got?”

“Quite a bit, actually. Do you want to put some of that stuff away in the fridge while I...” He managed to manoeuvre Lestrade directly into the kitchen, opened the fridge door and dashed out.

It didn’t work, of course. Lestrade naturally stood up to watch him. There was a rather choked noise and the head ducked down again. Oh well. He bundled the clothes behind the desk anyway, rejoined the expressionless inspector.

“Thought you were both coffee drinkers.” Lestrade gestured at the teapot.

“That.” For a moment John couldn’t remember where in the morning the teapot had come in. “Oh, Mycroft! Sherlock’s brother came by.”

“I’ve met him, yes.” Lestrade finished with the shopping. “About Moriarty?”

I think,”John said pointedly, “he was just being nosy. Lot of it about.”

“Yes.” Lestrade sounded unabashed. “There would be. That’s moreorless why I’m here.”

“Nosiness?”

“Other people’s reactions. You’re not going to like this but I would strongly recommend that you move out of here.”

John glanced round the room. Their room. “I don’t think Sherlock’s going to be persuaded to go anywhere. We’ll be OK.”

“I didn’t mean you and Sherlock. I meant you.” He looked tired. “I’ve been reading the psych files on Moriarty this morning. He’s unstable and obsessed with Sherlock and there’s every chance that he’s murderously jealous.”

“Psych reports. Waste of paper.” Sherlock walked in from upstairs, tying his dressing gown cord, hair wet against his neck.

“So tell me how they’re wrong, Sherlock.”

“They’re not wrong. They’re just obvious and superficial.”

“They suggest- no, they pretty much guarantee that he’ll try to kill John. What are you going to do to protect him, Sherlock? What can you do?” He was glaring at Sherlock now. “How the hell...I know he was threatening stuff but how could you possibly let him go last night? You must have known.”

“He’s always intended to kill John.” Sherlock sounded dismissive. “Jealousy just accelerated the timetable.”

Sick and hollow. Always intended. This wasn’t like battle. This was going to sleep not knowing if you’d wake up again. Lestrade was watching him, sympathetic, spoke to Sherlock.

“We need to get him out of here.”

“No need. I’ve fixed it.”

Sherlock looked moderately surprised at their expressions. “I was hardly likely to let him kill John, was I?”

“What have you done?”

“It’s a little complicated. But in crude terms, I’ve expanded Moriarty’s perception of me as an opponent to include John as well.”

“So he thinks John’s his enemy too?”

“No.” Sherlock waved an irritated hand. “That’s not it at all. He doesn’t have a separate perception of John, just of both of us. It’s been quite difficult. I doubt that anyone else could have done it so well. ”

“I’ll take your word for that.” Lestrade sounded dubious. “What does it mean in practice? That John’s safe?”

“He’s not safe.” Sherlock was scathing. “Neither of us are. But Moriarty doesn’t regard him as disposable. He won’t kill him just to annoy me.” He scowled at Lestrade. “If you had any idea what I was talking about you’d be incredibly impressed.”

“Do I want to know how you performed this minor miracle, then?”

“No.” Sherlock glanced over to John. “No-one’s going to be bringing any charges.”

Lestrade looked between them both, sighed. “Any time you want to keep me filled in about any of this, feel free. We didn’t get any useful prints- I don’t suppose...”

“All ten. Phone number as well; text and voice. And you can do some dog work for me on tailors too. Leather jacket, custom made. I’ll drop the lot by in a couple of hours.”

Lestrade nodded. “If you change your mind, John, we’ll help.”

“Thanks, but I’m pretty settled here.” He gestured around the room.

“I can see that. Don’t forget your sheets are still in the machine.” Lestrade managed a smile. “See you both later then.”

Alone again, John stood and looked at Sherlock. He was burnt out of anger today, couldn’t manage more than annoyance.

“Please don’t pretend that this was some sort of master plan of yours from the start.”

“No,” Sherlock ran a hand through his wet hair. “Much of it has been reaction. I used what was to hand. You in that jacket; I hadn’t anticipated that to flush him out so soon.” He flashed a smile. “Or the strength of my own reaction.”

John sank down into the armchair, carefully. Him and that jacket. “Just me isn’t going to be enough, is it?”

“It’s not as simple as most people seem to find it.” Sherlock was brusque. Irritation, or embarrassment.

John lowered his voice, deliberate calm response. “I had noticed that much, Sherlock. But I would appreciate an answer, if possible.”

Sherlock tugged his hand through his drying curls again, gave him a frustrated look.

“You’re quiet, John!”

“Quiet? Dull? Boring?”

“No. Tough and resourceful, and I’d back you to come out fighting against any of them.” His grin was quick, gone. “You and I, John, could probably take on just about anything. But you’re quiet! You have this little cloud of calm floating around you, most of the time. It’s quite remarkable.”

“But not attractive. You’re saying we have no chemistry.”

Sherlock stared at him. “No chemistry! Have you been awake for any of the last twelve hours? You and I could burn half of London down. But it’s a catalytic reaction. Without the catalyst you’re quiet,” he raised an eyebrow at John, “and I’m inert.”

John considered this particular analogy. Oddly enough, he could see where Sherlock was coming from. A bit.

“I’m not at all sure that I like the idea that keeping Jim Moriarty around is a prerequisite for me getting any. Couldn’t I just yell at you about the housework instead? I can get quite loud.”

Sherlock smiled at him sunnily. “When we’re done with Moriarty there’s plenty more trouble out there. We can go catalyst-hunting some time. Get our hands dirty.”

“Hide the bodies?” John was only half joking.

“Naturally. We don’t want Lestrade getting concerned.”

“Or your brother.” John stopped laughing. “This is what he was worried about.”

Sherlock shrugged. “I said that I didn’t care.”

No-one was dead. Moriarty was pleased. Mycroft was worried. John was not a damn sheepdog. He might be quiet but he was not dull.

“Fine. We don’t care.”

John resisted the temptation to get up and kiss Sherlock. He’d only be rebuffed. There would be other days, other catalysts. Right now he was guessing Sherlock had more interest in biscuits than in him.

“Considerably more. With coffee.”

John put the kettle on.

 

 **Part 3- Poor Loser**

 

The last thing that John wanted to see as he walked out of the surgery was the familiar car gliding up to the kerb.

He walked straight past. A few seconds later it was there again, pulled up just ahead of him. It was ten minutes walk to the tube station. Before five were up he'd had enough.

He yanked the back door of the car open. A young man this time; he felt an instant of disappointment. Mycroft's usual assistant was at least intriguing company. Pleasant smile, of course. "Doctor Watson."

John toned his snarl down a little. The boy was doubtless only doing his job. "Tell your employer that I've had a busy day, I'm tired and just want to get home. He can talk to me some other time."

Hopefully never. John knew exactly what Mycroft wanted to discuss, and he didn't. He and Sherlock were doing just fine.

"There are points failures on the Bakerloo Line and congestion on the Victoria Line. We will have you home quicker and in more comfort than the alternatives, Doctor." The man's voice was deep, despite his age, friendly, and the smile reached his eyes. "A few minutes only."

John glanced along the busy pavement. A lift home did sound enticing. He'd just stonewall Sherlock's brother if necessary. "A few minutes, then. And he shouldn"t think that he can do this any time he wants."

The smart young man offered a hand. "Stephen", then neatly diverted it to move John's bag under his feet.

"Somehow I hadn't imagined that doctors still had bags like this. Does it have a stethoscope, or do you use something electronic these days?"

"We still have those, yes. I'd be lost without it. " As he settled into his seat John was rather regretting his refusal of the handshake. This was after all a favour, even if unwanted and with Mycroft's usual ulterior motives. He tried a smile back at Stephen. "There's electronics in there too, but much of it would be easily recognised by a doctor 50 years ago."

"I guess for all that cutting edge medicine, there's still a lot about people that doesn't change." Stephen seemed happy to chat about modern medicine for the half hour that the drive took, through the centre of London and out to the North. John was trying to watch where they were going as well as making small talk, but somewhere around Kentish Town they took the back streets and he was lost. Sherlock would know, of course. They could be barely two miles or so from home.

The car pulled into a narrow street, waited for electronic gates to open. On the other side was a small square of high Edwardian houses, all facing around a tiny park of trees and grass. The car took a slope down into an empty underground carpark, pulled up beside a double set of glass doors.

"You can leave the bag in the car if you prefer." Stephen had got out, come round to open John's door. "It will be perfectly safe."

"I'll bring it with me." John had no doubt that it would be guarded, but it was his responsibility, not Mycroft's.

"That's fine. This way, please."

Four floors above ground floor and the carpark level; the lift stopped at the third. Polished floors, carved wooden furniture and high ceilings; John couldn't quite work out if these were extremely upmarket offices or someone's home. Did Mycroft live here? Somehow he hadn't expected to have been brought to the man's home without warning. There didn't seem to be anyone else about.

The small room they stopped in had a sofa, a low coffee table and a fire in the wrought iron grate.

"Make yourself comfortable, please. I'll be back very shortly." Stephen disappeared through a door in the far wall. John sat down, bag by his feet, and stared at the fire for a bit.

He was tired. He could do without this. All of this; the detour, the wait, the argument to come. Sherlock was not out of control. Sherlock could possibly be considered to be playing slightly sadistic games but only with the man who'd done, and deserved, far worse. It was no concern of anyone else's, no threat to anyone else. And as for himself and Sherlock, that was their own business.

John stood up, restless, walked to the window, looked down on the greenery below. It was starting to get dark, blinds and curtains drawn in the opposite houses with occasional slivers of light shining around the edges. The door opened and he looked round. Stephen again, with a tray.

"I'm afraid something has come up. There may be a short wait. I'm very sorry."

The tea tray went down on the table. "I would recommend leaving it a couple more minutes to brew."Stephen was back at the door again.

"Hang on. How long a wait could this be?"

"Hopefully very short. If you'll excuse me, I'm required elsewhere." And the door closed.

This was stupid. If he was going to be abducted the man could at least have the manners to be here.

John sighed, crossed to the tea tray, eyed the slice of fruit cake. The tea, once brewed, turned out to be Earl Grey. Not a favourite; John always thought it tasted musty, but it would do. There was a choice of milk or lemon. No sugar; doubtless his preferences were listed somewhere on Mycroft's databases. The man should have known he didn't like Earl Grey, but maybe that was crediting him with too great a degree of omnipotence. There was a folded copy of the Times as well.

The pot held three cups. They and all the cake was gone, the paper had been read and still no sign of Mycroft, or Stephen. John reckoned he'd been waiting over half an hour. He tried the door that Stephen had gone through, found it locked. The door behind him was open; he could, he supposed, just walk out, get a taxi home. The thought of that was almost as annoying as the thought of waiting any longer. Maybe he ought to go looking for someone, tell them he was leaving.

Inspiration struck. He had a number for Mycroft, never used, pressed on him after the swimming pool "just in case". John pulled out his phone and started to text.

I am leaving now.

He picked up his coat and bag as the phone rang.

"Dr Watson," Mycroft's voice was unperturbed as usual, "Leaving where?"

"You tell me! You're the one that brought me here. I'm not prepared to sit around all evening drinking tea and waiting for you."

There was a slight pause. Then,

"Don't hang up. The trace will be faster with the line open. Can you tell me roughly where you are?"

Trace? "It's a gated..." The tone changed and he realised that he'd lost the connection. He dropped the bag, ran at full tilt back the way he'd come through the silent rooms, took the stairs next to the lift two and three at a time.

On the first floor stairwell there were three men waiting for him. He stopped his forward momentum somehow before running straight into them, turned back to find two more had emerged from the second floor onto the narrow stairs. One of them had a gun. The other one was Stephen.

"Doctor Watson." The man's warm voice hadn't changed at all. "I think you would be more comfortable in the waiting room, don't you? I can have some more tea brought down if you'd like."

John had stopped between the two sets of men. Earl Grey. Fruit cake. Want to kidnap a stupid, stupid man? Obtain a car like Mycroft's, an assistant that could well have been Mycroft's, and simply drive up to John Watson and wait for him to get in. He'll go where he's told, eat what he's given, in blind ignorance and criminal carelessness.

There wasn't anywhere to run to. They'd shoot him if he tried to break through; maybe not to kill, but bullets ripping through flesh always have that potential. They would undeniably stop him. He grimaced at Stephen. "No tea, thank you," started walking back up the stairs.

By the time he was back in the waiting room, the men had disappeared. Stephen smiled at him, picked up the tray. "It shouldn't be long now. I am very sorry that you've had to wait."

John could doubtless take the man out, hindered as he was by the tray. At least one gun, somewhere behind him, unknown forces in the room in front and far too high to jump from a window. He sat down instead, watched Stephen disappear. He must have dropped his phone when he ran; it was nowhere to be found.

This was an altogether different kind of wait. He hadn't been brought here for an uncomfortable argument about Sherlock's morals and a lift home. Absolutely no doubt in his mind who was behind that door. Last time he'd been kidnapped by Moriarty, the man had barely paid him any heed at all, other than to cover him in explosives and threaten to detonate them. Of course, last time was before he'd hurt the man, screwed him over, dumped him in the street and mocked him. He undoubtedly had far more of Jim Moriarty's attention now than was at all safe.

Sherlock hadn't seen it that way. Sherlock thought that John was safer, now that it was personal, now that Moriarty saw them as a joint threat. Which was all very well, but he wasn't a joint anything right now. He was on his own.

Still, Sherlock's way was the only way to play it. Defiant, threatening, conciliatory, rational,none would do anything but get him killed or at least very badly hurt, and he didn't want to think about how badly Jim Moriarty might choose to hurt him. His role was already set, and he wasn't sure how he could possibly sustain it but it was the only one which was going to keep Moriarty's interest long enough for him to get out of here.

Decision made, he didn't want to think about it any more, about how little chance he had. So he picked up the paper instead, found a pen from his bag, started filling in the small crossword, remembering Moriarty in their living room completing the cryptic one. Maybe the trace had worked and the cavalry was on it's way.

When he heard the door open he counted in his head, one, two, three, four, staring unfocussed at the half finished crossword, then looked up.

Stephen, smiling. "If you'll come this way now." A gesture to the door he'd just come through.

John looked at him. He didn't want to go. Flounder, 11 across; he filled it in. That gave a D for five down. You hold your ground, Sherlock had said.

"Five minutes. I'll finish this first."

Stephen's smile looked, for a second, distinctly shaky. "He's ready for you now." John wondered briefly how the man had ended up working for Moriarty, and if he wished right now that he didn't. Stephen had abducted him; he determined not to start feeling sorry for the guy. "He's kept me waiting for an hour. He can wait five minutes."

Stephen's smile was back, but definitely fixed now. "I will pass the message on."

"Thank you." John looked back down at the crossword.

He was left in peace, but he didn't manage to finish the puzzle. One word eluded him. Somehow despite everything he managed to feel annoyed about that, and he hung onto the feeling as a talisman as he got to his feet. Five minutes he'd said; he wasn't going to sit here until he was dragged. Think about the puzzle, John, he told himself. That last word.

It kept him moving forward, at least. Outside was a short corridor, lined with closed doors, just one left open a little way along and across from him. He paused at that doorway to assess the room beyond. Bookshelves lined the high walls; dark spines, old books, a traditional library. A large table running the length of the room had a few scattered books on it. The roaring fire at the far end dwarfed the one he'd been waiting beside. Two leather armchairs were pulled up beside it, and in the left hand one the small figure of Jim Moriarty curled up, legs underneath him, reading.

No sign of Stephen, or of anyone else. John pulled all his courage up and walked beside the length of the table towards the other man.

"Good book?" His voice didn't shake.

"Idiotic. Like all the rest of them." Moriarty tossed the book into the fire, causing the logs to shift and the flames hiss. He was wrapped in a sleek red dressing gown. "What's the last clue?"

"Inspiring fear. 7 letters, A, e, o, e."

A wide smile. "Come on, Johnny boy. That's easy."

John shrugged. "It will come to me soon." He sat down in the other chair, hands on his knees, stretched out his stiff leg towards the fire. The book was charring in the flames, a mass of pages blackening and falling into ash. Spine down, its title couldn't be read.

"Will it?" Moriarty was smiling at him, head on one side. "Did Stephen look after you well?"

John knew that he had to take the offensive, however crazy it felt to be poking the quiescent tiger. Don't let Moriarty get bored.

"Is that your idea of a date, Jim? Tea and cake and a pretty face to serve it? I've got far better waiting for me at home. Not interested."

Moriarty blinked slowly, theatrically. "That's unnecessarily rude, John, after the pains I've gone to. I might be offended."

John shrugged. "I might not care. Not everyone is as sluttish as you. How are the bruises?"

"Want me to show you?"

"I've seen as much of your scrawny arse as I intend to. I've got better," he repeated, deliberately, "at home."

It was easier than he had imagined it would be to play this game. He really did despise the other man's posturing. For a moment he felt in control. Then Moriarty flicked his head back oddly, showing the length of his plump white neck.

"John," he murmured, "Such a sweet romantic. Just imagine how I might send you back to him. Think your little affair would survive?"

John's spine was cold. It had been bound to come.

"Any two bit villain with a couple of thugs for hire could do that. That's not going to impress him." He'd had that line ready. Moriarty's vanity was John's only defence against everything that six men could do to him.

That got a high laugh. "That's almost clever, pet. Almost. Of course it would sound better if you weren't absolutely terrified."

John wasn't going to deny that, not with his body giving itself away in half a dozen telltales. He had no intention of lying to Moriarty in any way that could get him caught. There were rules to this game.

"Occupational hazard. Sherlock and I piss people off all the time. Some day some cocky little crook is going to want payback. Seems today that's you. Just don't pretend you're doing anything original."

Moriarty leaned right back in the chair, eyes narrowed, watching him. "You might beg a little better than that. Transparent, clumsy and desperate."

John snorted at that. "Beg? Not likely. I'm just telling you what I think of your threats. What Sherlock will think." Not that he wouldn't grovel if he thought it would get him out of here in one piece. It wouldn't.

Moriarty's eyes glittered, as cold as his tone was cheerful. "Doing things that Sherlock wouldn't approve of might be considered the whole point of bringing you here."

John looked back into the flames to hide his dismay. Nothing remained of the book but the charred leather cover. He didn't have a weapon, but there was the fire; he could probably force the weaker man far enough into the flames to burn him badly. That wouldn't help with Stephen and the other men though, and if they didn't just shoot him they'd doubtless ensure that he suffered the same way. He didn't want to hurt Moriarty quite enough to bring that particular punishment down on himself.

He'd had his arm around Moriarty's throat once; he could do that again. It wouldn't get him out of the building, though; he wasn't strong or skilled enough to break the man's neck, and they'd rush him before he could choke the life from his hostage. Though he ached to dispel this fear driven adrenalin with a fight, his only hope was to draw things out as long as possible and put his trust in Mycroft's trace and Sherlock's deductive powers.

"The trace didn't work." Slow drawl. "Seems you'll stay for as long as I want you. And I think I do want you, dull as you are. I know it's embarrassing but I'm just a little bit of a stalker, you know. I like following Sherlock down all those dark passages."

John shuddered. That needed some sort of reply; he couldn't be a passive victim. Hold your corner.

"If that's what you want, it's going to take all your men out there to hold me down, because I don't put out for nasty little animals like you."

Not clever, but his heart was thudding too hard to be smart. And Moriarty was on his feet, close up. "Don't tease, Johnny boy. I'm getting far too excited already."

He didn't look excited, just smug. A hand slid up to John's cheek. "No-one's going to have to hold you down, silly boy. Not by the time we get that far."

"I don't think so." John's fingers snapped around Moriarty's wrist, pinching the soft flesh, feeling the fragile bones. Squeezing until the man hissed in pain. Reluctantly he let go again.

Moriarty pulled his wrist back, rubbed it. "You do enjoy that, don't you? Was that why you went into the Army? Don't look so ashamed, John. I can always find a use for a sadist with medical training. I'm sure Sherlock can too."

He had never taken pleasure in pain. Never before. But of course he would hurt the man now, any way he could, and enjoy it. Any small victory was worth having. Then he remembered Mycroft's oblique warnings. Moriarty corrupts. He wished acutely that he wasn't doing this alone. Things seemed so much more certain with Sherlock there.

Moriarty was watching him, head on one side, still rubbing his wrist. "You look lost, doctor. Time to check in with your lover."

John caught the tossed object automatically. A touch phone. He turned it over in his hands, watching Moriarty.

"Don't you want to let him know you're safe? He'll be worrying about you."

John wasn't safe, nothing like. But a call would give Sherlock data to work with. It might not be untraceable, for Sherlock, for Mycroft. There was nothing to be lost by calling.

It was answered on the second ring. "Sherlock." The voice was controlled. He would have talked to his brother, was no doubt expecting to hear from John's kidnapper.

"It's me." John was at a loss as to what else to say, with Moriarty close enough to touch. "I'm unhurt."

'So far' hung in the air. He didn't need to say it out loud.

"Where?"

John glanced at Moriarty's face. "I don't think I can give you that information."

Sherlock was brusque. "Just ask him where."

John looked down at the phone in his hand, then up at the other man. "He wants me to ask you where."

He expected a sneering refusal. Moriarty was taking pains to keep them hidden. Instead he saw a grin of pure malignant delight.

"Outer circle, anti-clockwise." He had leaned over to speak into the phone.

Oh shit no! "No. Don't be stupid, Sherlock. That's not going to help."

"Anti-clockwise." Sherlock was matter of fact. "Got it." And the phone went dead.

He couldn't let this happen. John stabbed over and again at the redial button, but the signal didn't return. In the end he dropped it, defeated.

"Why," he asked of the only other person who might understand what went on in Sherlock's head "would he do that?"

Moriarty was still looking pleased with himself. "The thing I like best about dear Sherlock is that he doesn't need all those tedious threats and demonstrations. I certainly can't be bothered to explain anything to you."

He raised his voice."Stephen!"

"Yes sir?" The young man must have been waiting at the door.

"Moving out. He'll be coming up to the camera gap before the Zoo in fifteen minutes."

"Yes sir." He stepped aside to let Moriarty pass, came further into the room. Behind him the first of three men took up position at the doorway, gun in his hand. The other two came to flank John.

"It will I'm afraid be desirable to blindfold you for the journey. However the process will not cause significant discomfort if you co-operate."

A proper blindfold, thick and dark. John didn't want it, but he was outnumbered and there was that gun. Though he imagined that Moriarty would disapprove of anyone actually shooting him yet.

"Where are we going?"

"Not far. If you wouldn't mind putting this on, Doctor?"

If he kept them occupied they might miss the rendezvous with Sherlock. Someone might persuade Sherlock that this was crazy. Mycroft possibly, or Lestrade, before he could arrange another one. That was enough justification for John, who had reached the point of really needing to hit someone.

He swung an elbow up into the face of the man on his left, brought his fist round to the other man's stomach, ducked behind the armchair. No gunfire yet, just curses from the first man. John had the fire to his back, one chair in front of him and the other on his left.

"Doctor Watson, please. There is nothing to be gained from this." Stephen was standing in front of the chair, looking mildly perturbed. One of the other men was wiping blood from his nose. The second didn't look as if the blow to the stomach had had any lasting effect; he was clearly awaiting instructions from Stephen.

Interesting. Chain of command went that way. The fair haired young man wan't just bait for traps then. All the more reason to keep him from going after Sherlock.

John found it wan't difficult at all to seem scared. "He's going to kill me, probably torture me first. Why should I co-operate? I might as well let you shoot me here."

"No one is going to kill you." Stephen sounded calm, reassuring. John wondered if anyone in his position would be reassured merely by a tone of voice.

"So you want to explain what he is going to do, then? What he wants with me?" Mostly to keep the man talking, though any clues as to what was going on here would be welcome.

"I'm afraid that you'll have to speak to the professor himself about that. Right now you need to come with us. We really don't want to cause you any discomfort in the process, but we would really like you to use the blindfold en route. There will be no need of it at the other end."

The man with the bloody nose appeared to be back to full operation again. All they needed to do was to pull the chair away and grab him. Fighting did not look promising.

Stall. "I need to visit the gents before I go anywhere. That's if you really want to avoid accidents."

Stephen glanced down at his watch. "Of course. If you'd come this way." They didn't grab him as he came out. For some reason Stephen really did prefer having his cooperation over the brute force option. Instead they escorted him to a marbled bathroom; a large one fortunately, since the three without guns all crowded in with him. The gunman waited in the corridor; John imagined that there were instructions about keeping the gun well out of reach. He wasn't yet desperate enough to contemplate trying to grab a loaded weapon off its owner, but he supposed that he might get that way eventually. It appeared that no one was taking the chance.

Unzipped, John stared at the marble, did nothing, let the seconds tick by. The quiet cough behind him got louder, then "One minute, Doctor Watson, then I'm afraid we must risk accidents."

Afghanistan had taught him how to urinate under stress and in company. He had drunk a great deal of tea; he waited until most of the minute was up, performed, zipped up and washed his hands, slowly and thoroughly.

They were letting him play these games; that surprised him. Stephen had glanced at his watch again, was clearly worried about the time and yet no one had just grabbed John and dragged him out. He'd thumped the guys pretty heavily and neither had laid a hand on him in retaliation. Either he'd just met the wussiest bunch of kidnappers ever or they were operating under instructions not to rough him up.

John took his time with the towel. Now, were the instructions 'not at all' or 'only if necessary'? With Moriarty out of the way temporarily at least and these men clearly disinclined to get physical, he was feeling considerably less helpless.

The men let him leave the bathroom. Stephen set out down a corridor, looked back to check that he was following. John wasn't; he had just been struck by revelation.

No-one had touched him, apart from Moriarty's hand to his cheek. No, more than that. No-one had directly threatened him. He'd assumed the men and the gun were there to compel his obedience, and they'd clearly wanted him to assume that. But what if Stephen's circumlocutions were the exact truth? That they'd like him to don the blindfold, come with them, but they weren't going to force him?

This was Moriarty, who had no compunctions about mass slaughter. It seemed unlikely that he'd just let John walk out, but it was worth a try. Stephen was heading towards the stairs; he followed quietly.

"The blindfold would be useful at this point." Stephen had stopped in the waiting room, John's bag and coat still there.

"No." He picked up his possessions, walked towards the man in the doorway with the gun, who moved to let him past. OK. Seemed he was right. John didn't understand it but he wasn't hanging around if he didn't have to. He resisted the impulse to run, walked steadily towards the stairwell. The men were flanking him, not trying to obstruct.

On the stairwell Jim Moriarty was waiting, fully dressed. John felt a sharp twinge of apprehension. Had it been a game, to let him get this far?

"Sherlock is already in a car. You won't be able to contact him."

John glared at him. "Come on, then, Jim, threaten him. Tell me how you're going to torture him if I don't come with you. Coerce me."

Moriarty laughed. "I wasn't sure that you'd work it out at all. Clever pet." The man stepped aside, gestured him past. "The front door's open. You scurry off home then. Any messages for him? I imagine he won't get home tonight."

Moriarty had men with guns. Moriarty might turn vicious at any moment, without warning. The sensible thing to do would be to get the hell out of here, go to Mycroft and the Yard, use what he knew to help them track down and rescue Sherlock.

"There's no point to the blindfold," he pointed out. "If Sherlock's not unconscious he'll know exactly where the car takes him, blind or not."

"It was amusing to see if you'd wear it, though."

"Can we get moving? The less time I have to spend in your company the better." There was no way that he was walking away while Moriarty had Sherlock. It didn't need threats to make him get in the waiting car.

The drive was a long one, out towards Essex. John read the road signs, was pretty sure that he could retrace the route. Moriarty was in the front car, with Stephen, two men and the possibly-not-a-hostage following. The gun was still in clear evidence. John imagined that he was meant to feel unsettled by it. He mainly felt irritated. He'd been jerked around successfully by Moriarty again; if he'd worked out the rules earlier, Sherlock wouldn't have got himself picked up and they could both be at home right now instead of heading towards a rendezvous where, like as not, Moriarty was going to revert to type with unpleasant consequences.

Onto country roads, then into a long drive up to a farmhouse. There was already a car in the farmyard, and as he got closer he could see an unmistakeable figure leaning against the bonnet in the light from the open house door. John's heart was pounding again as he watched Moriarty's car draw up next to the other one, the man get out and cross to Sherlock. His car stopped and he opened the door, not waiting for Stephen's instructions, drew himself up straight and went to over to greet his flatmate.

Sherlock was frowning at him, not annoyed, more puzzled. "You don't have the air of a kidnap victim, John. Yet you did on the phone."

"John," Moriarty said cheerfully, "is here entirely of his own accord. Isn't that right, Johnny boy?"

"Jim," John snapped, "is playing childish games. But yes, I agreed to come. You and I can go home now."

"Did you know there was a man with a gun behind you?" Sherlock sounded curious.

"Yes."

"But it doesn't worry you. So you've reached a deal of some sort."

John wondered what sort of deal Sherlock was imagining. Did this look like betrayal? Moriarty replied before he could. "I didn't expect the pet to get it, but I thought the world's foremost detective might work it out. Shall we go in?" He strutted off towards the front door.

Sherlock looked across at John. "Give me some data here, John. What happened?"

John shrugged. "He wanted me to think I was being held by force, but none of his people even threatened me. I don't know what he's playing at, Sherlock, but I think he really would have let me leave."

"Ha!" Sherlock bounced on his toes. "Of course. Come on!" He strode rapidly after Moriarty.

Moriarty was waiting for them inside the door, "So slow," he complained and he was up the wide staircase. John looked back; the man with the gun was waiting at the doorway.

A bedroom, and a kingsize bed made up in red and black. And candles. "Well?" Jim sat on the bed.

"An invitation would have been simpler." Sherlock stopped just inside the room, John beside him.

"Invitation!" Moriarty was scathing. "Where's the fun in that?"

"What if we walk out?"

"It's a cold dark night, neither of you have your phones and it's miles to the nearest house. There's every comfort here, including some rather good champagne, and in the morning I'll have Stephen drive you home."

"You do bribery then, if not coercion?" Sherlock seemed amused at that.

"Bribery is always allowed. I'm playing by all the rules here. Tell me that I get points for style."

"Not yet. You've brought your horses to water, Jim. How are you proposing to make them drink?"

"Make them?" Moriarty raised his eyebrows in surprise. He jumped off the bed and John took an involuntary step back. Moriarty wasn't going for him though. A hand reached around Sherlock's neck, pulling his head down, and Jim was on his toes kissing the taller man.

For a fraction of a moment Sherlock's limbs looked awkward. Then his hands clamped around Moriarty's shoulders. John tried to feel suitably nauseated, but managed only jealousy and a twinge in his groin. Damn, the sight of Sherlock kissing anyone was hot.

Sherlock was coming up for air. "Point made," he said, a touch breathless, to the man now sitting back on the bed. "I imagine John would like some food with his champagne. You don't seem to have bothered feeding him.

"There was cake," Moriarty sounded aggrieved. "Very good cake. I didn't want him whingeing later."

He grinned across at John. "You should have seen him though. The brave little soldier facing horrible torment. It was hilarious."

Sherlock didn't smile. "Don't push it. I might still conclude you've overplayed your hand. Indirect coercion was certainly used."

"So what? He's got a vivid imagination? Not my fault. No-one made him get in the car."

John loathed being talked about as if he were a child too young to be included in the conversation, but honestly, what could he say, apart from "I hate you" and "I want to go home"? Sherlock had decided that they were staying, without so much as a flicker in his direction. He wasn't going to leave on his own; he'd decided that, two nights ago. He wasn't going to argue with Sherlock in front of Moriarty, not unless he had to. He'd ended up here out of carelessness and stupidity, while Sherlock had come deliberately into danger after him.

With grace. The though, the word surprised him. He was used to thinking of Sherlock as graceful, but this wasn't a physical thing. Sherlock hadn't railed against Moriarty for the revealed deceptions, threatened revenge or even sneered. He accepted it; his enemy's plan had succeeded precisely this time and here they were, on cue; Sherlock might as well get what he wanted out of it, which seemed at the moment to be champagne and sex. It made John's inclination to anger and defiance seemed crude and out of place. Childish. Which, given Moriarty's behaviour, seemed distinctly unfair.

Still, there was something to be said for keeping this at the level of a game, with rounds won and lost. If Moriarty had just wanted revenge for being so thoroughly screwed over two nights ago then John might well have been tied up and screaming somewhere right now. Instead the man had decided that getting even involved outwitting them. John wasn't going to push him into the torture option; there was still an armed man downstairs. Let Moriarty win, give him his reward, get home safely, watch Sherlock plan the next round and hope to survive it.

For all that Sherlock seemed to be prepared to enjoy himself, John was pretty sure that it wasn't going to be nearly as much fun to be on the losing side. Still, there were the two of them. We, Sherlock had said.

So. Back the man up. "It was good enough, as cake goes, but it hardly makes up for a missed meal. Every comfort, you said."

Moriarty glanced at his watch. "Twenty minutes until dinner is served. A man used to the deprivations of active service should be able to wait that long. Just how soft have you got, John?"

"I'd prefer not wait around in your company, that's certain."

Moriarty was temporarily distracted from replying by a text message. He looked up again, teeth bared. "Then it seems that you're fortunate. Stephen will fetch you both for dinner. Please don't bother dressing up, just for me." He reached the door, turned with an eyebrow raised. "I know you two are eager new lovers, but really, I wouldn't recommend indulging quite yet. Your choice, of course, but that's my suggestion."

As the door closed, Sherlock was darting around the room with an energy familiar to John from dozens of crime scenes. John could make out only fast mutterings.

"Will the room be bugged?"

"There's a camera over the door. Probably at least two more to get full coverage, plus mikes." Sherlock was delving under the bed. He stuck a mussed up head out to say, "Not worth the time and effort to find and disable them. No private conversion, I'm afraid."

"Ok." It was a shame because John could really have done with one right then. Still, private or not, there was something he needed to say. He spoke to Sherlock's rear end, trying not to get sidetracked into considering that further. Not here and now.

"I'm sorry about all this. Getting into that car-I don't know why I did it."

"Conditioning." A muffled voice. "My brother is an idiot. I can't remember the last time he was quite that stupid. He is suitably remorseful; not that that's any help now."

A remorseful Mycroft? "It wasn't really his fault."

Sherlock emerged to glare at John. "Of course it was. You wouldn't have got into an unmarked car with unidentified strangers four months ago. Simple conditioning. The man even likes to call himself a behaviourist, you know. Idiot."

John thought that last epithet was aimed at Mycroft and not him, but he didn't think he'd check. He wasn't sure that conditioning made him seem much better that sheer stupidity had, but Sherlock didn't seem to be annoyed with him directly, anyway, despite their situation.

Why Sherlock had come, what would happen next, whether he thought that they'd be able to leave; all that John judged too sensitive for Moriarty's ears. He'd made what poor apology he could, so he sat quiet and watched Sherlock cover every inch of the room. Sherlock's findings were also not to be overheard it seemed; he didn't share them with John.

Finally Sherlock turned towards where John sat on the ridiculous red and black bedding.

"Done?" John asked.

"Done with that." Sherlock had that particular smile again, and John felt a surge of desire. Not the time or place, he would have said. Not with surveillance cameras and Moriarty's express warning. The warning, he thought, was probably what Sherlock was reacting to. Catalyst.

Sod the cameras. Sod Moriarty. He reached for Sherlock, pulled him down on the bed beside him, and wrapped his arms around the man's torso. They hadn't done this, he thought. Not just lying together on a bed, kissing. Even this bed...it was good. Fantastic. Sherlock had a leg wedged between his thighs and their bodies were moving slowly, rhythmically together but the other man's hands weren't at his clothing but round his shoulders. Pretty much just kissing, then. Sherlock was playing to the audience again, but John was past his pride about that by now. If that was what Sherlock needed to turn him on John could tolerate the idea of Moriarty watching.

He wasn't yet sure just how much more he was going to be expected to tolerate. Jim had kissed Sherlock and both men had clearly liked it. He must have let his thoughts show because Sherlock moved to kissing John's neck, working his way up close to his ear.

"Don't fret, John. You're sufficiently proficient. Just avoid overreacting."

That wasn't a great deal of comfort. Sherlock's mouth on his, and Sherlock's hands smoothing over his clothed buttocks, and Sherlock's erection grinding slowly against his thigh, trapped leg pushing against his own hardness were however sufficient distraction for the moment. God, the man's sweat smelt good; how had he not noticed that before? Kissing was fine but he was beginning to think that more would be better still.

The rap on the door startled him; for a moment he'd forgotten where they were.

"Come in." Sherlock didn't bother to unwrap himself from around John. Of course not; this was provocation. Stephen didn't raise so much as an eyebrow at the men on the bed. "Dinner is about to be served, if you would care to come with me."

Sherlock's attention had switched to the fair haired young man. John wriggled out from his embrace, sat up. He resisted the temptation to be polite. This was Moriarty's man. "You can wait outside until we're ready."

"Of course."

"Wait." Sherlock had sat up. "You're Stephen. And you were in the car that picked John up."

"Yes."

"Hmm." Sherlock turned round, picked up something tiny from a pillow. Hair. "You've been here, too. Just following orders, or was it your choice?"

"Not," Stephen said, still calmly, "any of your business, Mr Holmes."

"You think not?" He smiled, thin and fast. "You can wait outside now."

Alone, or the semblance of alone, he muttered to John "Watch that one." He didn't elucidate; he appeared too busy adjusting his clothing, running a quick hand through his hair. "Ready?"

"I guess so."

Dinner was laid out on the substantial dining room table; three place settings, one on each long side and one at the head, already occupied. Moriarty stood up as they came in, a facsimile of the perfect host. The smell of food was making John feel hungry, rather to his surprise. He had expected to be too keyed up to eat, but the interlude with Sherlock seemed to have settled his nerves and not even the sight of Moriarty smiling lizard-like at the two of them was enough to shake him out of appetite. He nodded easily at the man and took his place opposite Sherlock.

The roast, cooked to perfection, was served expertly by Stephen. The wine was excellent. Sherlock was eating, as much as John had ever seen him eat. John took his cue from that, didn't concern himself with drugs or poisons. They were entirely in Moriarty's power anyway.

For a long time they ate in silence. Moriarty seemed to be quietly hugging himself with glee; his silence was welcome, if unexpected. Sherlock was also unusually quiet, picking at his plate with a concentration that John had never seen him apply to mere food before. John had a glass of wine, then another, then declined any more. His instinct to stay clearheaded in danger had just about won over the urge to get drunk enough to get him through the rest of the night.

Plates cleared, Stephen brought round the brandy decanter and wide crystal glasses. Sherlock took a sniff, smiled.

"Courvoisier. Imperial?"

"Come on, Sherlock. Being a master criminal is rather more... lucrative than scurrying around Scotland Yard. Erte no 3."

"Really?" Sherlock took a sip from the thick crystal. "Splendid. Try some, John."

"I've had enough already, thanks."

"No." Sherlock was looking directly over the table at him. "I don't think you have. Take a glass of this brandy, which is doubtless better than any you have had before or will again."

Because it was Sherlock, John sipped at his glass. It was far richer than he'd imagined, and, he suspected, extremely strong. Both men were watching him with approval and that unanimity of purpose unsettled him. He thought that he could imagine why they wanted him drunk.

He drained half the glass, pushed the rest away, with inward reluctance. It did taste spectacular. "Brandy's never been my tipple, I'm afraid." If both men knew he was lying, neither challenged him about it.

"Stephen will bring the champagne upstairs. Shall we, darlings?"

"Indeed." Sherlock stood up, waited for John at the door. The hand on his shoulder was some reassurance, at least.

Upstairs Moriarty opened the door to a shower room. "Five minutes. Don't be too naughty, boys." He closed the door behind him and the sound of water hitting the ground started up.

John spread his hands out at Sherlock. "Well?"

"Well." Sherlock didn't seem to have any of John's apprehension. His arm slid around John's waist, pulled him close. "Relax," the voice in his ear said firmly. "Just co-operate and he's got no leverage." Lips nuzzled at his earlobe. "It won't be boring, at least."

Oh, so that was all right then. As long as Sherlock wasn't bored. John twisted to catch Sherlock's lips, wondering what would happen if they just ignored Moriarty and got on with this.

The shower door opened some time later. Moriarty tossed a thick black towel to Sherlock, identical to the one now round his waist. Sherlock disappeared into the shower room without comment.

Moriarty pulled a dressing table drawer open, tossed something at John. "Make yourself useful, pet." He sprawled face down on the bed.

John opened the vial, sniffed at the contents. Scented oil. Various uses came to mind; he wondered what Moriarty intended.

"A little over-eager, aren't you? Just massage oil."

Oh. Co-operate, Sherlock had said, and at least this way he stayed on top. He settled himself against Moriarty's towelled thighs, poured a little oil on each hand.

Jim's skin was slightly waxy, oddly hairless. Bruising across the right shoulder bore witness to their previous encounter. John slid his fingers up the man's spine, dug hard into the bruised muscle. He was rewarded by a flinch. Moriarty didn't protest but John didn't try it again.

It was a while since he'd done this. As he relaxed the effect of the brandy became stronger. Face down, Moriarty could have been anyone. Aroused already, John started taking pleasure in the feel of oiled muscle under his hands, the slight noises from underneath him

The touch on his shoulder startled him. Sherlock, also half naked. "I'll take over. Shower."

John undressed awkwardly in the large shower room, trying to keep the oil off his clothes. The shower was hot and powerful; he stood under it, eyes closed, hand loosely around his erection, picturing Sherlock in the other room. He stopped himself before it turned into something more definite; he had things to do out there. He dried himself on the remaining towel, wrapped it around his waist and opened the door.

Things had progressed. Moriarty's towel had come loose and Sherlock was kneeling between his naked thighs, his massage considerably more intimate. God, those hands; John's cock twitched firecely against the soft towelling.

John settled himself behind Sherlock, picked up the vial from the bed. Sherlock's shoulders rolled luxuriantly under his hands. He didn't have the patience to stay above the waist for long; soon his fingers were sliding down smooth thighs.

Moriarty rolled abruptly over and away from Sherlock. " I'm forgetting my manners. A good host doesn't let his guests do all the work." He slid off the bed, walked around behind John. "Shall we make you squeal, darling?"

John ignored him. Sherlock had twisted to face him and those long fingers were wrapped around his cock.

"God" he murmured, leaned up to kiss Sherlock. Hands behind him were running across his back, sliding around the scar tissue and down again. It didn't hurt; he concentrated instead on what Sherlock was doing.

Most of the way there and he stopped being able to ignore Moriarty completely. A finger was pushing smoothly inside him; he wriggled to dislodge it unsuccessfully. Hell with it; John decided he didn't really care. He let himself imagine for a moment that it was Sherlock's cock, and came panting into the man's mouth.

When he pulled away, he could still feel the finger. No, two. Sherlock was looking at Moriarty over his shoulder.

"Back up" Sherlock instructed. "Feet on the floor."

John could see where this was going, was still too full of endomorphins to care. Let the man have his fun, then. John had after all had his, and Sherlock was watching out for him. He slid back off the bed, felt Moriarty's erection hard against his buttocks.

"Bend forward." Sherlock had shifted forwards on the bed, was kneeling, knees spread. Bending over would put John's mouth in roughtly the same place as Sherlock's groin. He snorted slightly; the man was not subtle. Still it would distract him from Moriarty, and Sherlock probably deserved a blow job for those skilled fingers. He grinned up at Sherlock, bent over, lips apart.

It wasn't quite distraction enough. Jim was clumsy penetrating him; he'd be sore tomorrow. Still the noises that Sherlock was making made up for it. He ran the fingers of his right hand under the man's balls, sucked hard.

Fingers clamped around his wrist, pulling his arm backwards to lie flat across his back. He yelped, more in surprise than pain, waited for Sherlock to protest. A couple of heartbeats and he realised that it wasn't going to happen. This was payback. Pinned down, he could hardly move his head; Sherlock started rocking gently onto him instead, picking up the rhythm of the other man behind him. He felt uncomfortably helpless.

Then Moriarty hissed something at Sherlock that he didn't catch and Sherlock surged up on his knees and forward. John gagged, used his free hand to push the base of Sherlock's cock away from him, far enough to breathe at least. What the fuck was Sherlock doing?

His arm was ripped up and back to meet the other one behind his back and he lurched forward onto Sherlock's erection. Bile filled his mouth. For a moment he thought that Sherlock had got the message as the man pulled back, only to push into John's mouth again. The noises above him became clear; they were kissing. His nose was forced into rough pubic hair; he gasped for breath around the thrusts, steady from Sherlock, hard from Moriarty. He'd just about decided that he was going to bite the bastard when his mouth was flooded and Sherlock's twitching cock softened. He was rammed four more times harshly by Moriarty until that too stopped and the pressure holding his arms behind him ceased.

John lifted his head, spat sour wine and ejaculate on the covers. Then he pushed himself upright.

"Here." Sherlock pushed a crystal flute into his hand and he sipped at the liquid automatically, desperate to get the sour taste out of his mouth. Sweet and fizzy; the champagne; he hadn't even seem it arrived. He drained the glass and staggered to the bathroom. Cold water on his face and around his mouth helped a little. He pulled his clothes on, took a breath, opened the door to the bedroom and walked straight through it to the corridor.

Moriarty was laughing, high pitched. Sherlock was at his shoulder. "John." His voice was a warning that John ignored in favour of pulling the door to behind him, in the man's face.

The farmyard was still lit from several windows. John half ran past the cars. His bag, in there somewhere; he felt a moment of regret for it. The long driveway was dark; the night was overcast and the only light was the glow of a town in the distance. Not London, he thought; they'd come too far for that. He stumbled awkwardly down the long road, nervous of veering into the unseen ditches at each side.

On the ground from yet another fall, he twisted to noise behind him, and the sweep of headlights. His hand closed around something solid as he stood. The car stopped behind him and the door opened.

"Doctor Watson. You can't possibly walk in the dark like this. Let me drive you home." Stephen came around to the front of the car, hand outstretched. "Get into the car, please."

No. Not again. John swung his fist, with whatever it was that he'd picked up, into the side of the man's head and he fell. A brick, he thought, dropping it, looking down on the man sprawled on the driveway. He ought to check that the man was still breathing. Instead he climbed into the driving seat, turned the keys still in the ignition and drove forward, swerving to avoid the body. Someone would find Stephen.

The car wasn't much easier to keep out of the ditches than he had been. When he reached the the road he slammed the brakes on, smashed his fist into the steering wheel and swore.

If he drove away now, Sherlock was a hostage. Bloody Sherlock, who shouldn't even have come. He yanked the gears into reverse and turned to see behind him as he reversed back up to the farmhouse. He'd forgotten about Stephen until the car went straight over him, right rear wheel, then right front.

John slammed the brakes on, sat for a second behind the wheel, shaking. The feel of the impact; he remembered the way the man had been lying in the road. Chest, or head. Stephen was dead. Had probably been killed by the brick; had certainly been crushed by the car. There was nothing to do but to get Sherlock out of the house and get the fuck away from here before Moriarty found out that their non-violent little encounter had turned lethal.

He backed up all the way into the farmyard. He ought to have a clever plan but alcohol and shock had done for that. Instead he slammed his palm onto the button at the centre of the steering wheel and left it there as the car horn screamed into the night.

A painfully long time with nothing happening, then a figure was silhouetted against the farmhouse door. John recognised the flapping coat and breathed again. Sherlock climbed into the car without speaking, stayed quiet until John swerved to miss the dark shape on the drive.

"What was that?"

"Stephen."

"Dead?"

"Yes."

A sharp hiss. "John..."

"Just," John said, pulling out onto the road, "shut up, Sherlock." Sherlock pulled his coat tight around him and shut up.

The first village they came to had a payphone. John pulled into the carpark behind the village hall, out of sight, stopped the engine.

"What's Mycroft's number?"

Sherlock turned to look at him for the first time."Not a good idea."

"You've got a better one?"

"Home."

"No. I'm not letting him get away, not this time. You're going to give me Mycroft's number, or you can bloody well walk back to London."

Sherlock sighed, reeled off a string of digits. "I warn you, you're going to regret this."

"So far tonight I've got us both kidnapped, I've let a psychopath fuck me and I've killed an unarmed man. Phoning your brother is unlikely to come in high on the list of regrets." John slammed the car door with rather more force than required, stalked off to the phone box. It was too conspicuous, but he couldn't see a good alternative.

Mycroft answered the phone on the first ring. "Yes."

"It's John. I'm in a phonebox."

"Yes, I have your location."

"Good. Our car's parked behind the village hall. Moriarty's in a farmhouse. Our route was point four miles along the drive, right turn, one point two miles to T junction, right, point eight miles into the village, left turn into the hall."

"Got it. Forces?"

"Moriarty, at least five- no, sorry, four others, at least one handgun."

"Civilians?"

"Not that I know of." He briefly wondered who had done the cooking.

"I'll send a car for you."

"I've got the car they picked me up in. I'm not getting in any other cars with strangers tonight, Mycroft."

A pause then, "Understood. Will you please take an escort?"

Given that John didn't actually know the route back home, he couldn't see the harm in that, "Yes".

Mycroft's voice turned hesitant. "Is Sherlock hurt?"

John snorted in surprise. "Hurt? No. He's sulking. He wanted to stay at the party longer."

"Thank you." Mycroft's voice had become firm again. "Get out of sight, wait for the escort."

Sherlock hadn't moved. John slid back into the driver's seat. "He's sending an escort."

"Hmph."

John sat in silence for a few minutes, feeling queasy. Eventually he spoke.

"This is a win/win for you, isn't it? You win a round, you get off on watching me hurt him. You lose, you get off on watching him hurt me."

"I wasn't going to let you get hurt." Sherlock objected.

"You failed on that one. Not that you were in a position to notice."

"Come on, John. You're tougher than that. He wasn't particularly rough."

"That wasn't the point."

"So what was? Tht you lost control of the situation? You got yourself kidnapped, John. Not my doing."

"I never expected you to save me, Sherlock. I just didn't expect you to join in on the other side."

Sherlock didn't answer that one. John went back to waiting in silence. Then his head lifted.

"Is that?" He opened the door, stood up, peering into the dark. "It's a fucking Hawk!"

The plane screamed overhead and a few seconds later the sky brightened and the ground shook.

Sherlock was out of the car with him.

"That was a ground attack!" John was dumbfounded.

"You called my brother, What did you expect, a couple of panda cars?"

A car screamed through the village, and then another. The jet was coming back again. Here, in the dark, he could have been in Afghanistan again.

"Nobody," he yelled at Sherlock, "gets to bomb Essex! No-one has that sort of authority at five minutes notice! Who the hell is your brother anyway?"

Sherlock waited for the plane to pass. "I knew he had a great deal of theoretical power. I didn't anticipate that he would use it for anything less than a serious threat to overthrow the government." He sounded shocked.

"Moriarty's a threat."

"Moriarty's a criminal." Sherlock glared at John. "Mine to deal with. Not Mycroft's."

A pause. "What is it, John?" Sherlock was fierce.

"If you're not willing to deal with Moriarty, that makes it his problem."

"What did you say to him?" Sherlock's voice had dropped.

"Nothing much." It hadn't been more than an annoyed aside, really.

"What?"

Nothing for it. "I said that you were sulking because you didn't want to leave the party."

A distant throb that John didn't need to look up to identify as Chinook helicopters.

"Well done, John." Sherlock's voice was almost inaudible. "You couldn't have made more of a mess of things if you'd tried."

Gravel crunched as a car turned into the carpark, followed by another. John got back into the car, started the engine. No certainty that these would be who they claimed.

A dark figure got out of the lead car, came over to the open window.

"Doctor Watson? We're here to get you out of here as soon as possible."

"Good. Shall we go?"

The man hesitated. "I would recommend that you let me drive. THere is a possibility of hostile action."

"I've driven under fire in Helmund Province," John snapped. "I think I can manage Essex."

Sherlock leant staight over him to speak to the man. "He wasn't over twice the legal limit driving in Afghanistan. He's far too drunk to drive safely." And to John, "This is our legitimate escort. Get in the back and let them do their job."

Drunk or not, John had sufficient control not to tell Sherlock what he thought of him in front of a bunch of paramilitaries. He moved into the back seat, seething. Sherlock, he noticed, didn't offer to come back there with him. No, Sherlock was making small talk with the driver. Polite conversation, no less, from Sherlock. John thought it was probably some form of insult aimed at him, but he was too tired and hazy to work out how. Despite everything, he fell asleep almost as soon as the car started moving.

"John?" Someone was calling his name, shaking at his arm. He woke fast, an old habit, sat up to look round. A row of cars in front of his front door and the upstairs lights all blazing.

Sherlock was still leaning over him. "John. Listen."

He muttered annoyance.

"Listen, John! You're drunk and angry and in shock and you want to tell someone about it. You mustn't. Let me talk to them."

He was pulling John out of the car. Someone took his arm on the other side; the driver? John stayed limp.

"Does he need a hospital?"

"He's not hurt, just drunk. He'll sleep it off."

They maneuvured him up the stairs. The living room was a blaze of light.

"I suggest the armchair." Mycroft.

"Bed." Sherlock objected.

"I don't think so. You've both got some questions to answer." They put him in the armchair and the driver left.

"You won't get anything out of him until morning."

"No?" Mycroft had come to peer at him as he sprawled in the chair. "How very odd. He was quite coherent an hour ago on the phone."

"He's ex-military, Mycroft. He's capable of significant feats under stress. However he's also human and it amused Moriarty to get him near paralytic."

"Hmm." Mycroft didn't sound convinced. "So tell me your story, Sherlock."

"No."

"I estimate the cost of tonight's little excursion to be somewhere over half a million pounds, excluding damage. I have people out there counting body parts. Some sort of explanation might be in order."

"I can explain that one. Your ridiculous overreaction. You knew we were clear of the place. You had the SAS at your disposal, and you decide on an airstrike. What did you do, panic?"

"I don't need you to tell me how to do my job." Mycroft's voice had stiffened.

"I suppose it's too much to hope for that your blunderings actually killed him?"

"There are bodies, or at least bits of them. Too early for identification."

Through half closed eyes John saw Sherlock snatch up his laptop. "I imagine my phone is another casualty of a thousand pound laser guided bomb. If he's out there, he'll use email."

He tapped at the keys, stared, sat back with a long sigh.

"What did he send?"

"Arrived four minutes ago." Mycroft crossed to look over the man's shoulder.

"Someone is a extraordinarily poor loser," he read aloud, precisely. "Tell Johnny boy that he owes me a boyfriend. I'll collect shortly."

"Unfortunate." Mycroft sounded shaken.

"It is not unfortunate." Sherlock had rounded on him. "It is criminal irresponsibility. I am doing my best to keep John alive here and you are sabotaging that, with everything from your stupid car pick-ups to your stupid bombs."

"And none of this has anything at all to do with your own propensities, I suppose? You're engaging in sexual intercourse with with him, Sherlock. Do you intend to make any real attempt to close him down before his next massacre? "

"Get out." Sherlock sounded tired. "I need to think. Come back tomorrow, if you must."

"I trust that John at least has learned something tonight. Until tomorrow, then." Footsteps down the stairs and the front door closing.

"You can wake up now."

John opened his eyes, struggled to sit upright. He felt like hell.

"Mycroft was right, yesterday."

"I never said he wasn't right. I said that I didn't care." Sherlock was frowning at the laptop, stabbing at the keys.

"Do you think that he's corrupting you? Us?"

"The term's meaningless. I'm in control of my actions, not him."

"He must be laughing though. I heard him laugh."

"Let him." Sherlock slammed the laptop closed. "Sooner or later we'll have him." He looked over at John. "Mycroft's wrong about that. I want him defeated once and for all. I want you safe."

"Yeah." John couldn't help that one sounding cynical. Sherlock strode over to look down on him.

"I mean it. You weren't unsafe, back there. Uncomfortable, I admit. I considered that, concluded that you were unlikely to object. It was, as far as I was aware, the sort of thing that sexual partners might experiment with."

God. Sherlock. Context. "You want to try something like that in our living room one evening, fine. I'll probably be up for it. But back there the last thing I needed was to feel more damn helpless."

"Yes." Sherlock considered him. "I should have taken that into account. Sorry."

Stephen and God knows how many more were dead because of it, and Moriarty was after revenge personally. Right now he wasn't sure that sorry was enough.

"Tomorrow. We'll talk about it tomorrow."

He closed his eyes, felt sleep dragging. Woke to find a blanket tucked around him and the long low notes of Sherlock's violin in the dark. Awesome, he thought. That was the answer.

The morning would be serious trouble from all directions. He was tempted to stay awake, just to put it off for longer, but in the end the music, soft and deceptive, lulled him back to sleep.

 **Part 4 Collateral**

"Don't try to bluff. You need me to find him."

Sherlock had leaned back in his chair, eyes on his brother, not the manilla folder under Mycroft's hand. John thought that he sounded a little less sure of himself than usual, but maybe that was projection. He himself found no comfort in Mycroft's questions.

"I am not yet sure that I want you finding him." Mycroft's little finger was tapping on the disputed papers as he leaned forward across the coffee table.  
"What, precisely, is your current relationship with Jim Moriarty, Sherlock?"

A snort of disdain. "Rather less unstable than your relationship with food. And I don't feel the need to throw up afterwards."

"That was uncalled for." A frown across Mycroft's eyes as he turned to John in the kitchen doorway. "What about you, Doctor Watson? Do you have anything to add?"

"What's in the folder?" Sherlock might deduce, but John had to ask.

"The preliminary report."

"Saying that?" John gestured to the muted TV. The headline hadn't changed all morning; "Essex Farmhouse Cult Explosion". A BBC reporter to camera dutifully recited over and again the contents of the police statement; the tiny religious cult, the charismatic leader, the security forces' arrival just too late.

"No." Mycroft didn't even glance towards the pictures.

"How many dead?" He didn't want the answer but he had to ask.

"Five confirmed so far."

Five? He'd thought there were only six men there. "So he got away alone?"

"No." Mycroft's voice was dry. "At least one body is female; the caterer hired for the evening and her assistant are both missing."

Cold apprehension became a soldier's nightmare. "I should," John said quietly, "have worked that out before I rang you."

"Not your fault." Sherlock was harsh. "My brother was well aware of the probability of collateral damage when he chose his course of action. I doubt that it kept him from sleep last night."

"You kept me awake last night, Sherlock." Mycroft's hand tightened around the folder. "You and Jim Moriarty. He kidnaps Doctor Watson and your response is to sleep with him. How am I meant to interpret that?"

"Please, Mycroft, spare me the tired euphemisms. I don't sleep with anyone."

"Fornicate with him, then. Is that better?"

"If you must. He didn't kidnap John, of course. Misdirection. It was more in the nature of an invitation."

"A welcome one, it seems." Mycroft's lips were pursed. "Three days, Sherlock, and what little morality that we've managed to persuade you to in long years has been stripped away. Three days. Another three days and is it still going to be Jim Moriarty that I need to neutralise?"

"Morality?" Sherlock was out of the armchair, voice raised. "Cant and hypocrisy! Is this performance for John's benefit, Mycroft? Because you're wasting your time. He has a much better idea of what's going on here than you do."

"So explain it to me, Sherlock, and you can have your folder."

"No." Sherlock turned away from his brother. "My plans don't need your approval. I'm not going to subject myself to your control, certainly not after the mess you've already made. Moriarty's my game and I'll win with or without your files."

Mycroft looked across at John, the obvious query on his face.

John had sought help from Mycroft last night, despite Sherlock's warnings, and innocent people had died. He shook his head slightly.

"Very well." Mycroft's voice had deepened. "If you won't work with me I will not give you a free hand in this, Sherlock. I will find Jim Moriarty myself, and I recommend that you are nowhere in the vicinity when I do so."

He slid the folder back into his neat black briefcase, stood up to leave."I'll be watching. Of course."

John drew the curtain aside to watch the silver car draw away.

"You haven't asked about Stephen," he said to the man behind him.

"No."

John turned to see Sherlock sweeping the grey coat around his shoulders.

"Where are you going?"

"To ensure that my brother is kept too busy to interfere. Sort out new phones; you'll find my numbers on your laptop. Text me when you're done."

"Text you on what?"

Sherlock flashed the pink phone in his hand, slipped it into his pocket and headed down the stairs. John sighed and started looking for his credit card.

Three hours later and John was still trying to figure out how to sync new phone and old address book while combatting a severe hangover when the news story changed.

He had not, he'd told himself, been wallowing. He didn't need to agonise about the missing women (the news had caught up with that, had played the interview with a distraught sister three times this hour already, each time making his headache just that bit worse); he had enough of his own guilt from last night without taking on Mycroft's. Still, he hadn't turned it off; even though nothing had happened for hours and the BBC was reduced to replaying old Waco footage and talking to "experts" in cult murder/suicides, the rolling news format kept you thinking that, any minute now, something important would happen.

"So how much of a headache for the authorities is this blog turning out to be?"

"It's hard to tell." The reporter looked genuinely pleased to have something new to report. "Martin Webb is a popular and respected London political blogger and 'Essexgate' is already trending on Twitter. It's the level of detail in the apparently highly confidential material he has posted which seems to be convincing readers that there never was a cult and that this is instead a black ops security operation gone wrong. People want answers, and the people here in Galley want them most."

Cue the same local background interviews that they'd been running all day. John frowned at the television.

His flatmate took that moment to come running up the stairs.

"Phone." Sherlock was flushed and looked pleased with himself.

"It's here, but I can't get this to work."

"Move over." Sherlock slid onto the sofa next to him, pushed him sideways." I'll do it."

John watched sure hands at the keyboard, conscious of the warmth of the leg against his. For once he was glad of Sherlock's usual disinterest.

"What were you doing?"

"Causing trouble."

"The leaked security files?"

"Very good. Yes."

John pulled back from him in dismay. "Sherlock! You can't toss classified material to a bunch of bloggers just to annoy your brother!"

"Careless talk costs lives?" Sherlock didn't seem concerned. "Hardly. I doubt that it will even cost Mycroft his job, unfortunately, but it will require all his attention to clean up the mess."

"You don't know anything!" John found the day's frustrations had boiled over. "You don't know what the consequences could be for the poor sods who have to carry out these missions and you don't care, any more than your brother cares about who ends up underneath, or Moriarty cares for anything. Just a bloody game to all of you."

He had stood up, backed off so he could shout. "I know men who fly planes like that one last night. It's not a game to them. Mycroft sent them out to kill women last night and now you want to have them publicly hung out to dry just to upset him. I don't know which of you I find more despicable."

Sherlock had turned away from the screen to consider him. "Very eloquent." His voice was dry.

"Sod eloquent, Sherlock. I mean it. People are dying and you're not even interested."

"Ah." Sherlock's fingers were pressed together lightly. "This is about Stephen."

"No it's not!" He turned to walk out, cursed, turned back. "Yes. All right then. Blood on my hands bothers you so little that you can't be arsed to ask how or why. What am I, a henchman?"

That amused Sherlock, which only angered John more.

"Just...fuck off, OK."

"Would telling me about it make you feel better?"

"Christ, Sherlock. No! It's not that easy." He thought for a moment of his therapist. "I just... you ought to care, at least, if I start murdering people."

He reconsidered off the man's silence. "No, maybe that wouldn't bother you in the least."

"It is unlikely to happen." Sherlock was frowning at him now. "You didn't murder Stephen. Manslaughter, probably. I imagine from the extent of your distress that it was unintentional but not entirely accidental. I didn't choose to distress you further by demanding details."

"Not entirely accidental. You could say that." John sat down in the armchair, facing Sherlock, trying not to shake. "I hit him over the head with a brick. He just asked me to get in the car. I panicked I guess."

He paused, looking down at the carpet. "No. I wasn't frightened. I was just angry. And drunk. Then," he brought his head up to meet Sherlock's expressionless face, his breath tight in his chest, "I forgot he was there and reversed over him. What do you think a jury would make of that one?"

"It's not going anywhere near a jury. Forget it." Sherlock's attention had returned to the computer. "He was heavily complicit in Moriarty's operations, which means that there was a great deal of blood on his hands. No-one else will miss him." He glanced up briefly. "And we needed the car. No loss. Really."

He had no right to be consoled, John knew. Still, the tightness in his chest had eased a little.

"You shouldn't have leaked that material, Sherlock. It could cause all sorts of damage." He felt obliged to one more protest on behalf of his ex-colleagues.

"I can't have Mycroft interfering. That would truly be dangerous. Trust me, the leak's no more than embarrassing. I wasn't able to get hold of the really significant papers at short notice."

He tossed John's new phone over. "Done. How about Angelo's?"

"Aren't we meant to be hunting Moriarty?"

"No need for that. Your little faux pas and Mycroft's fondness for loud bangs have had one positive effect, at least. He'll be making the next move, and soon."

Somehow John didn't find that thought particularly uplifting.

 

Despite Sherlock's prediction, the next four days were quiet. There were no more leaks and the press and public generally seemed to accept the official explanation that the explosion had been set off by the farmhouse occupants. John went back to work and to trying to persuade Sherlock not to wreck the house in his absence. He kept his hands and for the most part his eyes off his flatmate's body, although his thoughts were not so easily diverted.

It wouldn't have been so bad if it had just been memories of Sherlock dominating his late night fantasies. It wasn't. And not just memories either; he couldn't help but imagine the heat of the kiss that he had not been party to. He refused to get off on any fantasy that he couldn't keep Jim Moriarty out of; he had fallen asleep very late last night, disturbed and unsatisfied.

Two hours later he had woken in the throes of full-scale panic. The forgotten obstacle in the road had been a young child; he could hear the mother screaming as the car jolted over it, but when he looked back the body neatly bisected by the razor edged car wheels had been Sherlock's.

No chance of sleep after that; he got up, went downstairs for a drink. Sherlock was crouched over his laptop; he acknowledged John's arrival with a nod, went straight back to whatever he was doing. John curled up on the sofa with a cocoa and Sherlock's uncommunicative but reassuring presence and napped intermittently until morning.

No clinic on Sunday, at least. No sign of Moriarty either, and no Mycroft. By late afternoon the sun was slanting across the living room and despite the lack of sleep John was feeling slightly more cheerful.

"Don't you think," he started, passing Sherlock a coffee, "that your brother's distraction has probably worn off by now?"

"Doubtless. What about this one? What do you get if you cross an elephant with a goldfish?" Sherlock had picked up a rather ancient joke book in a second hand book shop the day before and was systematically trying the contents out on John. He claimed it as research, though into what he wasn't entirely specific. John thought it was probably into refined torture techniques and had refused to respond after the first couple of hours. Pleasant though it was to see Sherlock engaged in something that seemed to have no connection with either of their current nemeses, he was a little concerned about Mycroft.

"Isn't that going to be a problem?"

"Swimming trunks, apparently. A play on words, undoubtedly, but does it generate amusement? John?"

"Mycroft, Sherlock?"

"Don't worry. He'll have learned not to interfere." Sherlock was leafing through the book for more ammunition.

"Sherlock!" John had the satisfaction of seeing the man's head snap up at his tone. "If you have to lie to me, could you at least not insult my intelligence in the process?"

Sherlock flashed a smile. "Very well." He tossed the joke book onto the table. "I have no idea why Mycroft hasn't been in touch. I have no idea what is keeping Moriarty for so long. If the answer is "each other" then we me all be in serious trouble. I don't think it is. But you are quite right; my distraction of Mycroft has ceased to be of any real use, and I imagine that he is now quite intensely annoyed."

"So we're screwed, then?"

"I wouldn't go quite that far. My brother is usually manageable, with a little effort. It's Jim's patience that is worrying me. Waiting for his move may prove to have been a mistake."

He tipped his head on one side, considering John's reaction. "Next time I'll lie more effectively. You are getting little enough sleep as it is."

"Yeah." John sighed. What he wanted to ask was whether all of this had been worth it, but he didn't think he liked either of the possible answers. He fell back on practical instead. "So what can we do?"

"Stay alert. Expect the unexpected. Oh, and it's probably worth buying some more condoms." His smile went straight to John's groin.

Damn. "I suppose you don't fancy..." John started, aiming at casual and missing by about a mile. Sherlock's raised eyebrow was all the response he needed.

"Patience, John."

"Easy for you. Apparently."

"Yes." Sherlock sipped his coffee, unmoved.

"Right." John was not going to bolt to his bedroom like a desperate teenager. He had his pride about this. Instead he settled down to the Sunday papers, reading snippets out loud as usual in exchange for acerbic commentary, and his unhelpful arousal gradually subsided.

He was well into the sports pages when the doorbell rang. Sherlock glanced out to the pavement below.

"She's not sure if she has the right place, and she's nervous. Show her up, John."

John was not Sherlock's butler, but he was halfway down the stairs before he formulated a complaint. His hand went automatically to check the gun concealed in his waistband before he opened the door.

"Hello?"

"Excuse me." The lady was in her forties, without make-up, face pale around dark eyes. "Does Doctor John Watson live here?"

"Yes. That's me." A patient? "Can I help you?"

She peered at him, apparently taken aback at the identification. "Oh. Um. Do you mind if I come in?"

If this was Moriarty's idea of an assassin, John felt he could probably handle it. "Of course. Come upstairs."

Sherlock stood as they came in, showed the lady to the armchair with politeness. She glanced between him and John, uncertain.

"My flatmate, Sherlock Holmes."John thought that he recognised her unease. "I think the lady would like some privacy, Sherlock."

"Of course." Sherlock nodded, grave. "My commiserations on your loss. Your son?"

She nodded, hand tugging at the hankerchief in her pocket. Spoke to John, "Did he know Richard?"

"Sherlock is just very observant." John watched him retreat to his bedroom on the far side of the kitchen, door ajar.

"Now, Mrs?" he paused, politely.

"Telling. Joanne Telling." She was clearly waiting for a reaction, but he didn't recognise the name.

"And what can I do for you, Mrs Telling?"

She was frowning now, confused. "It's Richard. I thought you might not know. I didn't know if anyone had told you. No-one seemed to know who you were."

"Richard was a patient of mine?" He didn't recall the name but there were so many.

"No! I mean, maybe he was. Richard Telling. You wrote to him?" She was twisting uneasily now. "You are John Watson? I thought you'd be younger."

"I'm sorry. I don't recall writing to anyone of that name." He tried to sound reassuring but it clearly wasn't helping.

She glanced over her shoulder at the kitchen, dropped her voice. "You don't want him to know?"

"Sherlock? No, I'm sorry, Mrs Telling, I have no idea what you're talking about." Grief was supposed to turn people's minds occasionally, but he couldn't figure out where she might be coming from.

"Oh God," She was angry now. "You wrote all those things to him and now you don't even care that he's been killed." She pulled open her handbag, dropped papers on the table. "I've read your letters."

John picked up a couple of sheets. Handwritten on headed notepaper, of the sort he'd never bought for this address. Doctor John Watson, his professional qualifications, 221B Baker Street.

The letters were neatly written; nothing like his handwriting. He read a couple of pages; playful, affectionate but not explicit. Letters to a boyfriend. To Richard, from John.

John looked up at Mrs Telling's tight lips, her tears, and shook his head. "I don't know..." he started. How on earth had this happened?

The same way everything bizarre around him happened, he guessed. He raised his voice. "Sherlock!"

"I'm sorry." he went on to the grieving mother, quietly. "Someone has played a very cruel trick on you. I've never seen these letters before, and I didn't know your son."

"No." She was shaking her head, starting to cry in earnest. "Why would anyone do that?"

"I don't know. I'm sorry." He wondered what on earth he could say.

Sherlock was at his elbow, reaching out to finger one of the sheets of paper. "How did Richard die, Mrs Telling?"

She took a breath. "It was just outside his flat, in Islington. Tuesday night. The driver didn't stop, the police said. They said...drinking..." she dissolved in tears again, unable to finish.

"Do you have a photograph of Richard?"

"Yes. Yes of course." She took out her purse, hands quivering. A fair haired lad in graduation gown and cap standing by a tree and smiling at the camera.

Stephen.

For a moment John lost track of everything but the nausea. Then he felt Shserlock's fingers digging painfully tight around his elbow.

"That's Warwick campus!" Sherlock sounded inanely delighted. "I had my picture taken in almost that same spot."

"You went there as well?" A hint of interest under the tears.

"Politics and economics, 2001."

"Richard studied politics too!" She managed a smile. "He only graduated two years ago though."

"I expect Mrs Telling would appreciate a cup of tea, John." A hidden, hard shove. John fled gratefully into the kitchen. Behind him Sherlock was leading their visitor smoothly into details of Richard's- Stephen's- life.

For a moment he wondered if the woman was an actor, but he was too familiar with the debilitating effects of sudden bereavement. He didn't think they were faked. Sherlock would know.

Why bother to fake it, anyway? Stephen was a young man; of course his death would be some parent's nightmare. All Moriarty had to do was to forge a couple of letters. What grief stricken mother could resist meeting her son's adoring lover? His murderer. Pure Greek tragedy, this.

The feel of the brick in his hand, his foot on the accelerator as he tore back up the driveway; it wasn't enough that he hadn't intended this. Joanne Telling would know that. He knew it. Moriarty knew it, even if Sherlock didn't.

What could he do? Apologise? Tell her the truth? Yes, your son was killed by a drunk in a car but, you see, we needed the car and his employer had been quite annoying. Or make tea while Sherlock lied to her just as Moriarty had already done?

He made tea. Stood staring down at the steaming mugs, incapable of picking any of them up, absolutely unable to face the woman again. He could hear Sherlock's voice, mostly low, occasionally lifted in a quiet laugh that was nothing like his normal amusement. Mrs Telling's replies were almost inaudible. After what felt like hours standing in the kitchen he was relieved to see Sherlock's head round the door.

"Thanks, John. I'll take those." Sherlock's gaze was considerably sharper than his voice. John spread his hands, helplessly, and Sherlock gestured towards his open bedroom door. "Just keep out of the way," he murmured, not particularly gently.

John lay flat on Sherlock's bed, cataloguing the things that had gone wrong. If he'd never got in the car. If he'd walked out when he found that he could. If he'd tried to persuade Sherlock not to stay. If he hadn't drunk so much. If he'd not stormed out into the dark. If he hadn't over-reacted to Stephen. If he'd remembered, God, if he'd only remembered that he'd left an unconscious man in the roadway.

If he'd ripped Jim bloody Moriarty's head off any of the chances he'd had. That wasn't a mistake he'd make again. Whatever Sherlock's game was, he was going to ruin it next time that man was close enough to kill with his bare hands.

Evenutally he heard footsteps going down the stairs, then up again. He lay still, eyes closed, wishing the world would go away. Instead the bed rocked as Sherlock threw himself down next to John.

"Oh, Jim," Sherlock crooned, delighted, "you have slipped up this time. You should never have sent your pawn to my door."

"She's not a pawn," John snarled. "She's a bereaved mother. Christ, Sherlock!"

Sherlock rolled over to face him. "To Moriarty she's a pawn. He's using her. I presume your guilt hasn't blinded you that far."

"No."

"Well, wringing my hands about how appallingly she's been treated won't help her. Using Moriarty's errors of judgement against him, on the other hand, may well do."

He raised an eyebrow at John. "Or you could trot off to Scotland Yard and turn yourself in, making me at best an accessory to manslaughter, of course, which would pretty much leave Jim Moriarty free to do what he likes to anyone."

John wanted to shout at him "You said no-one would miss him!" But he'd known all along that that was a reassurance that he had no right to take.

"She doesn't get justice, then." He'd known that, too.

"Moriary sent her here to get exactly this reaction from you."

John had nothing to say to that, so he rolled onto his side away from Sherlock, closed his eyes, tired and momentarily unwilling to move.

The fingers in his hair were unexpected. He tensed for a moment automatically, barely relaxed as Sherlock's thumb pressed against the back of his neck.

"What are you doing?" Because caresses had not been part of anything between them so far and he'd already been manipulated far too much for one day.

Sherlock's mouth, up close to his neck. "For a military man you're finding this remarkably difficult."

He pulled away, sat up. "It's meant to be difficult. I killed someone, Sherlock. Stupidly and unnecessarily. She's never going to get over it; it's going to take me a good deal more than five days. It's got nothing to do with soldiering."

"You're no good to me like this."

Sometimes Sherlock took John's breath away in quite unexpected ways.

"Tough."

He reconsidered off Sherlock's clear frustration. "Look. This isn't your fault. I mean, God knows I wish you'd made a few different choices, but I chose to go along with them and this...this death is entirely mine. I can't pretend it's OK."

He paused, sighed. "But if you want help hunting down the man who sent that poor woman to our door, I can do that. Tell me what you've found out."

He raised a hand just before Sherlock could speak. "I'm out of patience with games. This time we bring him in."

"That's always been the idea, John. I'm not as easily distracted as he thinks."

John nodded, somewhat sceptical. "Just so we're clear."

"He may occasionally underestimate me, but he's still the most difficult of opponents. And I do intend to continue keeping you alive in the process, which, incidentally, has not got any easier. It may not be...direct."

"Is that a roundabout way of telling me that you're going to have sex with him again?"

Sherlock flashed a smile. "That approach is progressing nicely."

"Progressing where, exactly? Seems to me that he's getting everything he wants."

"Good." Sherlock rolled off the bed onto his feet. "That's how it's meant to seem. Now, I imagine that your conscience requires you to face the gory details of Stephen's death."

"I guess." He didn't want that, but, yes, he ought to know. "What did she tell you about it?"

"The post-mortem report was completed yesterday; coroner's hearing will be opened tomorrow. Standard RTA procedure which means that no-one has connected him with Moriarty. Mycroft will have marked her visit, though, may be able to identify her. We need to move quickly. I want a copy of that report before the inquest."

He hissed in frustration. "This would be so much easier if I could use Lestrade. My brother's scrutiny is inconvenient to say the least. I can't do anything that draws attention to this case."

He was pacing, thinking. Turned to John. "Out with it."

"What?"

"The idea you've just had."

"It's a bit far fetched. But...how's your inner bureaucrat?"

The consultant pathologist's secretary was no match for Sherlock. John stood back and tried not to feel too sorry for her. This had, after all, been his idea.

"You will just have to tell Mr Resner than his hospital licence has been suspended until the language assessment has taken place."

"I can't." Her eyes were wide. "He'll have my job. Really, I didn't get any of the emails about it. I told you."

"The policy comes in from tomorrow morning. No exceptions. If your consultant has not had a written language assessment, he will not be able to carry out his duties. This is a very important issue that has been too long overlooked. People have died, Ms Townes, as a result of ungrammatical reports."

"But he's a pathologist! They're mostly already dead!"

"No exceptions." Sherlock turned to go.

"Look. You said tomorrow morning. Can't you do it now? Then there won't be a problem."

"Now?" Sherlock considered the possibility. "Only if you can provide me with a sample of text created within the last 48 hours that meets all the criteria."

"I've got..." She typed something, peered at the screen. "Some letters."

"Minimum three thousand words."

"Oh. Oh, there's a postmortem from yesterday. Would that do?"

"I have no idea." Sherlock said, exasperated. "I am not a," he glanced down at his papers, "pathologist. Was it created to provide specialist information for decision making purposes?"

"I guess so. It's for the police."

"It may do then. Print it out and my assistant will take it down to the assessment team. They may have time to assess it. If not, Mr Resner will hear from us in the morning."

He looked down at his papers. "What's the quickest way from here to Gastrology?"

The taxi driver must have thought them drunk from the way they giggled all the way home.

"She won't tell anyone, because she thinks she nearly got him suspended." John couldn't quite believe it had worked.

"And even if she finds out that there never was a written language assessment, she won't tell anyone because she'll have to admit that she gave us the report. Beautiful, John. Inspired."

"I couldn't have done it, though. You were marvellous; utterly convincing."

"Yes. I rather think I was." Sherlock's self satisfied smile had John in stitches again.

Back at the flat, watching Sherlock read the purloined papers sobered him. He picked up the discarded papers as Sherlock dropped them, started to read. Be a doctor. Be some use.

Sherlock waited for him to finish. "Well? What do you think?"

"I think." He paused. Far too much emotion to judge this right. "I think he was dead before the car went over him."

"Of course he was. There are half a dozen facts pointing to that conclusion. Our Mr Resner was a stickler for recording accurate observations. Just an idiot when drawing conclusions."

He waved at the papers in disgust. "No injuries to the legs at all, and he still concludes that the victim was knocked down by a car and hit his head on the road, because that's what he 'knew' happened. No blood drawn into the lungs because the man was dead before his chest was crushed. It's the only conclusion fitting the observations."

"Does it matter?" There had been photographs. Handsome, well-spoken Stephen hadn't been at all pretty when they found him.

"I doubt that anyone else will read the report in sufficient depth to argue with an experienced forensic pathologist, which means that his death is unlikely to be investigated further than a search for the presumed car in Islington. That's good news for you."

"Yes." He supposed it must be.

"John. There were armed men at that farmhouse. Moriarty kills without compunction, and it was reasonable to conclude that he'd already got what he wanted from you. Anyone he sent after you was prima facie a lethal threat. You may think that you overreacted drunkenly but your subconscious was primed by exactly the right data when you hit him, and there's not much finesse in a brick. We've established that the car injuries are irrelevant. It was a combat decision, John."

Just like that. John shook his head. "It can't be that simple."

"On this occasion it is. You drew a conclusion on partial evidence and your own emotional state. You have new evidence. Re-evaluate the situation."

John looked down at the photos. They were bad enough, but they were real. The stuff in his head had been vaguer yet far worse. This was the man who had worked for Moriarty. Somewhere along the line he'd lost that, thinking only of an innocent dead.

"A combat decision. I can try to think of it that way," he conceded.

"Good. I imagine that you would have found the funeral tomorrow distressing otherwise."

John turned his head sharply. "Funeral? Why would we go to the funeral?"

"Mrs Telling is widowed and Richard was her only close family. No, don't start that again, John. He was, from everything she was trying to conceal from me, a horribly ungrateful child; he got involved in fraud while he was at university and she ended up footing the bill. And certainly none of the salary from the high powered job as PR for an import/export company that he was so proud of came her way. Just Moriarty's type, your Stephen.

"Anyway, he had dropped all his old uni acquaintances on making it big in organised crime, his new friends are nowhere to be seen and his poor mother is dreading an empty church. So as a fellow Warwick alumnus I offered to come and represent the old alma mater. As my partner naturally enough you'll come too. She was terribly disappointed about the letters, by the way; she thought you sounded lovely."

"You didn't actually go to Warwick?"

"Good lord, no. Politics and economics? Utter drivel."

John shook his head. "Just checking. Why are we actually going?"

"Moriarty has gone to ground again and I want to find him before my brother does. Also it will show Jim that he's underestimated you again. Tough as nails is the general impression we're aiming at."

"Won't that just make him try harder?" John wasn't at all sure about that plan.

"As long as he's trying to break you or seduce you or both, he's not thinking about having you murdered." Sherlock wasn't smiling now. "He thinks you're my vulnerability; we have to keep him from simply going for the kill."

Tha hollow feeling was back. John didn't like to remember the poolside, how helpless he had been. He seized on a distraction. "Am I?"

"Are you what?"

"Your vulnerability. I thought you weren't interested, like that."

Sherlock looked momentarily uncomfortable. "What's important is that he thinks you are."

"No, what's important to me is what you think, Sherlock. I'm not after any profound declarations here. I just think that if I'm actually any sort of weak spot I'd like to know before someone covers me with explosives again to exploit it."

Sherlock scooped the postmortem papers up, dumped them back in a single heap on the floor. "He wouldn't be wasting his time with you otherwise, I assure you."

Before John managed to think of a reply to that Sherlock was off across the kitchen and a moment later his bedroom door was firmly shut.

So. That wasn't exactly a profound declaration, no. Sherlock didn't like being vulnerable; hardly a surprise. Sherlock didn't feel the need to be polite about it, ditto. Sherlock didn't do relationships; that much was becoming increasingly obvious.

What was he doing with a man who wouldn't even touch him unless he was thinking about someone else? He knew better than this.

John pulled the gun out of his waistband, placed it gently on the coffee table, sat on the couch and looked at it. This was his home. He shouldn't need to carry a loaded gun. After a while he half stood so that he could reach into his back pocket, chucked the wrapped condoms down next to the weapon. Three of them. Fancy that.

He was still contemplating the evidence of the state of his current existence when Sherlock emerged again.

"Meet me downstairs in eight minutes. Don't bring any of that." He swept downstairs without further explanation. John sighed, started to unload the gun in order to put it away.

Out on the pavement he looked round, finally spotted Sherlock waving from the opposite side of Baker Street. By the time he'd made his way across the busy carriageway Sherlock had flagged down a taxi and was holding the door open for him.

"Number 18. I'll pick you up later; don't try to make your way back on your own. It's not safe."

John found himself unceremoniously shoved into the back seat, a carrier bag dumped on his lap.

"What?" he tried. "Where?" But the door had closed and the taxi was moving out into the traffic. He could aske the driver where they were going but he suspected that the address would mean no more than the number had. He could ask to be taken back home but he wasn't ready for the conversation he needed to have with Sherlock.

The carrier bag contained four bottles of beer and a rather expensive bottle of red wine. That kept him wondering all the way to Crystal Palace.

Number 18 was one of a new block of apartments in a leafy road, on the ground floor with its own entrance. John rang the bell, waited, shifting from foot to foot. When the door opened he gave what he realised, embarrassingly, must have been an audible sigh of relief.

"Sherlock said you'd be over." Lestrade stepped aside for him to go in.

"He didn't happen to mention why, did he?" John wondered briefly if he was meant to talk to the inspector about what was going on with Moriarty. No, the bottles suggested that this was meant to be a social call.

"No. You know him; three word text. I did think about calling him back but I had some stuff to do, then you arrived."

Stuff, John guessed, glancing into the living room, was the pile of papers and DVDs pushed into the corner of the room.

"It's a bit of a mess, I'm afraid."

"That's OK." John sniffed. "That smells good."

"Have you eaten? I can put some more spaghetti on; there's plenty of sauce." Lestrade was clearly as unsure as he was of the purpose of John's arrival.

"That would be great. I've brought this." He pulled out the wine. "And some beer." Lestrade was clearly struck by the wine; John felt some clarification was needed. "Sherlock bought it, actually. This was his idea. I'm not sure..."

"No, that's good. Good, really. Can you open the wine while I finish the meal?"

They carried plates into the living room. Startled green eyes caught John's, and the tortoiseshell cat disappeared behind the sofa.

"She's OK, will be out in a minute." Lestrade seemed to have relaxed. John took a quick look round. Just the Inspector and the cat, he imagined. The TV was showing Sky Sports; some foreign football league.

"I can turn that off."

"No, it's fine." It was; it gave them both something to watch while they ate. The wine was good; not up to Moriarty's table, but then the company was infinitely better.

Greg, as he insisted John call him, took the empty plates out, came back and looked over at John.

"Have you two argued...no, forget that. Just being nosy. None of my business."

When John didn't volunteer anything beyond a shrug he moved easily enough onto other topics. By the time they'd dissected England's rugby performance and established that they both liked thrillers but didn't get to the cinema often enough they'd finished the wine and had moved onto the beer and John was feeling more relaxed than he'd done at any time since Jim Moriarty had turned up in his bedroom. The cat had reappeared and after some coaxing had settled down in John's lap, purring.

Inevitably the conversation got onto work, eventually, and onto Sherlock. John didn't say much; just enough to encourage Lestrade to talk. He seemed quite happy to relate endless tales of the man's brilliance and the difficulties in working with him. If he remembered that he was talking about the man John was supposedly sleeping with, he didn't seem to let it restrain him. This was, after all, Sherlock they were talking about. Social niceties didn't seem to apply.

John admired, laughed and commiserated as appropriate, but he was listening out for something, never heard it. Eventually he interrupted a story to ask.

"Well, no. I guess not. We sort of assumed...didn't he tell you?"

"No. We haven't really talked about that sort of thing." John admitted. They should have done.

Lestrade was clearly reining in his curiosity. "No, then. Not that I know of. He's always been quite aggressively single, I suppose." He smiled over at John. "It's good, seeing him with someone. Good for him."

"I'm not so sure about that." Off Greg's expression he tried to explain without exposing anything. "I'm not sure that I don't encourage him to...stuff. Without meaning to."

"No. I'm sure that's not true. He's been clean since he met you, for a start, hasn't he?"

"Clean?" Lestrade clearly wasn't talking about the state of their kitchen. "Clean from what?"

"Didn't you...oh shit. Look, I shouldn't be talking about any of this. Just forget it."

That was hardly going to be easy. "Clean from what? Come on, Greg. If you know, surely I ought to?"

"Well." Lestrade hesitated, then took a swig of the beer and started. "It's cocaine. Not that I'm precious about the stuff; there must be several thousand lines snorted in London on a Saturday night and mostly I guess it doesn't do that much harm. But Sherlock used a needle and as far as I could tell he did it alone."

Now that he'd started he seemed determined to continue. "Well, he didn't want to talk about why he did it and he wasn't interested in hearing about the risks. I bullied him a bit but all I think I did was make him slightly less blatant about doing it. He'd stop for a few weeks, then go back again for a couple of days. Not addicted, as they rate these things; as far as I could tell he just liked it."

He shrugged at John. "Seems to me he's been clean since you moved in, But you're the doctor; I guess you'd know."

"I've not seen any evidence of it." John doubted that it was all his influence though. Had Sherlock merely switched one dangerous hobby for another?

"Maybe I should have kept quiet. Ancient history, probably. I guess it was sort of a confidence." Greg was uncomfortable again. "If you fall out over it..." He trailed off.

"No. I needed to know. It sort of explains some stuff for me."

"Yeah, well. Don't think you're not good for him. Though how you put up with him every day I can't imagine."

"It's not that hard." That bit really wasn't.

The conversation lapsed gradually into a comfortable silence. When the doorbell rang John glanced at his watch, was surprised to see that it ws past midnight.

"Coming in?" Lestrade at the door.

"The cab's waiting." Sherlock's familiar brusque voice.

John nodded at Lestrade as he got his coat. "Thanks. For the meal, I mean."

"No problem. Drop by again sometime, if you'd like."

"Yeah. Yeah I might. Thanks."

In the taxi he was silent for a few minutes.

"The Inspector's been telling you all about my sordid habits, then." Sherlock seemed amused.

"How did you...?"

"You've glanced at my arm three times already, though what you expect to see through three layers of clothing baffles me."

"No doubt you know how I feel about it as well, then." Irritated, mainly, overlaying worry. Why couldn't the man take a little care with himself? "Look. I'm not in a position to tell you what to do. But I don't see why I should have to live with the stuff. I'm telling you now that the day I find recreational narcotics into our flat, I will move out."

"It won't be a problem." Sherlock sounded unconcerned.

"So was that why you sent me round there? To find that out?"

"No. You were brooding again and I still had a lead from the mother to follow up. It was a suitable solution."

"Greg was babysitting me, then?" John felt rather put out.

"If you like."

"He thinks we're a couple, you know.'

"Not even Lestrade can always be wrong." Sherlock was still relaxed.

John parsed this one. "You don't think we're a couple, surely?"

Sherlock had turned to watch him as the car went past the bright street lights. "We live together. You perform most of the domestic chores for both of us. We work together, especially when breaking the law. You shot a man for me; I let myself be kidnapped for you. Other people have taken to referring to us as a single unit. And we have had sex moreorless with each other three times in the last week."

"Oh." That was something of a surprise. "I didn't get the impression that you did relationships."

"I don't "do" them. But I draw my conclusions from the available facts. On most functional, and for that matter most legal definitions, this would consititute a relationship. If that affects your pension then you should probably declare it."

John snorted. "Only if you desperately want my survivor benefits. I don't think they're enough to worry about." There was something rather wonderful about the idea that Sherlock considered them a couple, even if he thought there was likely to be rather more domestic chores and shooting people and rather less sex than he would consider optimum.

"I probably ought to indicate at this point that I regard Valentine's Day cards rather as you do opiates. It would be a great pity if I had to find somewhere else; Baker Street is near perfect for my work."

"Believe me, that won't be a problem either." Not now he'd been warned, at least.

John curled up in bed that night and slept better than he had all week. The gun and the condoms lay in the second drawer down beside the bed, temporarily forgotten.

 **Part 5- Turning Point**

The feel of John's head throbbing when he woke distracted him from everything else except the dryness of his mouth. Water; he groped for the glass at the bedside without opening his eyes. His fingers bruised themselves against bare wood and the message that something other than himself was wrong here finally reached his aching brain.

Bright sunlight through a window in the wrong wall; a room that he didn't remember. He pulled himself up to sit and nausea wracked him. All bad.

It was a huge bedroom, with a low timbered ceiling, solid furniture, nautical scenes on the walls and flowers in a vase on the windowsill. His back was against an ornate wooden headboard and his legs covered with fine cream sheets and a dark blue eiderdown.

Not a hotel. Not, he imagined, anyone's bedroom; the surfaces were bare. If this was the guest room, the rest of the house was likely to be impressive. He was getting the feeling that he'd done this before.

He couldn't remember past his aching head; where he was, how he had got here. The bedside table, taller than the one at home, held a jug of water and a glass. He sipped the liquid suspiciously but it tasted only of water and his nausea slowly subsided.

He was wearing a pair of the shorts that he usually slept in. The chair by the dressing table held a pile of folded clothes that looked from the distance across the bedroom floor remarkably like his own, and something- maybe a laptop- resting on top of them. He couldn't remember what he had been wearing, or when. Why couldn't he remember?

Concussion. The state of his head, the nausea, the amnesia. John put the glass down, reached up with both hands to check his scalp for sore points, and pain shot through the wrong shoulder. He finished poking under his hair with his left hand, finding nothing, then reached back carefully over his right shoulder.

Two inches or so square of gauze padding, neatly fastened down with medical tape. When he prodded at the area underneath it hurt so he stopped. He'd been injured and patched up. Not, he thought, a bullet wound this time; his shoulder worked, he didn't think there was deep muscle damage. A burn, maybe, or an abrasion.

What else had happened? John climbed out of bed, slowly, his head protesting the movement. A full length mirror stood beside the dressing table; he examined his mostly naked body critically.

A wide bruise was darkening on his left hip. There was a deep scratch across the back of one hand, a minor graze on the palm of the other. His eyes were slightly bloodshot and the nausea came in waves. Otherwise, nothing.

From here he could see through the Georgian window; one floor up, looking over a long, high walled garden laid to lawn and neat borders. Over the far wall he could see the cream stucco of the tall houses beyond. Still in London, he guessed, but that part of London with a great deal of money at its disposal.

The item on top of what were definitely John's clothes was an iPad. As he picked it up the screen brightened to white, with Play in the centre. He couldn't think of a good reason why not, so he did.

"Johnny boy." John found that he'd dropped the device back on the chair, backed up a step, heartbeat racing. Fuck. Moriarty's round face was smiling from the screen, shoulders bare. John couldn't see much past him; brick wall and fluorescent light.

"Sherlock thought we ought to say goodbye. He's a little sentimental, still." Moriarty looked as if he had everything he always wanted. John felt ice cold. Goodbye?

"I would do it in person but," Jim glanced aside, then back, smile widening, "you passed out a few minutes ago. Not to worry though; we were done."

He spoke louder. "Was that everything?" John couldn't make out another voice in the pause, but Moriarty continued as if he heard one.

"Of course. I'm sorry. Nearly forgot." His smile flicked off, then on again. "Sherlock says run." And the screen went blank.

Run.

The window would open; the high garden walls weren't promising but there was no-one visible. John pulled clothes on fast, hesitated between jug and iPad and chose the latter for hard corners. He was trying to figure out the window catch when there was a knock at the door and it opened.

John had already raised the tablet defensively when he registered the identity of the man in the doorway. He blurted out the first thing that came to mind. "Where's Sherlock?"

"That," Mycroft said, frowning at him, "is what I was intending to ask you. Do come downstairs, Doctor Watson. Tea is on its way."

They had found him, apparently, unconscious in an empty house. Mycroft wouldn't be drawn further. "It would be better if you remembered." He did say that the iPad had been found in the room; he had left it with John in the hope that it would assist in recollection.

Sherlock was missing, and Mycroft's obvious concern was doing nothing to prevent the worry engulfing John. Had Sherlock been there, when Moriarty made that recording? Had that last message really been from him?

"What's the last thing that you remember?" Mycroft's questioning was persistent.

It didn't work like that. He had nothing to orientate himself by, just confusion. Eventually Mycroft reluctantly provided something.

"Yesterday morning you attended Richard Telling's funeral. Do you remember that?"

Was that yesterday? God yes, he remembered that.

"Tell me what you were doing there."

The pause lengthened. John finished drinking his tea, took a biscuit. His head still hurt. They'd spent hours that morning tracking up and down London, making sure Mycroft had lost their trail.

"Very well. Tell me what happened."

The tiny church had been full; all Richard's work colleagues had turned out; row upon row of men in dark suits. The eulogy had been delivered in sombre tones by his employer. "Richard's death," he had concluded "will not soon be forgotten." Jim Moriarty hadn't glanced once at John, or at Sherlock.

Thye'd tried- he'd tried- to get away, after the family had filed out with the coffin for the trip to the crematorium. That's where he'd obtained the bruise, hitting the pew as he fell, the graze on his hand. "The rules, " Moriarty had informed him, still in his serious funeral voice, "have changed. That's what happens when you break them, John."

Mycroft was waiting. John shrugged. "We were abducted." 'Again" hung, unspoken.

"Then?"

Then what? There was the back of a van, Sherlock quiet but his eyes darting. They'd arrived somewhere...nothing. Nothing he could describe. "I don't know." A direct appeal to Mycroft. "Why can't I remember?"

"Do you remember anything? Anything at all about Sherlock leaving?"

"No." The nausea was back. "I don't have answers to your bloody questions. What about answers to mine? How did you find me? Where? When?"

Mycroft exhaled gently, placed his tea cup back on its saucer.

"I find the message left for you by Jim Moriarty deeply disturbing. My overriding concern is in finding out where my brother went and why."

He tipped the teapot, added milk.

"You made a decision, Doctor Watson, to be part of Sherlock's activities. You were warned, repeatedly. You chose to ignore those warnings and you are still choosing to keep information from me, despite the fact that it must be clear to you by now that Sherlock is very far from infallible."

The teaspoon stirred in a spoonful of sugar, then a second.

"I have not rescued you. You are not here so that I can assist you in your recovery. You are here so that I can establish why Sherlock has disappeared. If I provide you with information about what happened yesterday then you will tell me absolutely everything that you recall, however trivial, however unpleasant."

He was waiting for John's assent.

There seemed little to lose; John remembered nothing anyway, past the van. "Agreed."

Mycroft stood up to retrieve a pile of papers from his desk.

"It took longer than it should have done to identify your visitor. When a name was obtained, a link was found to your landlandy and the officer concerned concluded that Mrs Telling's visit to Baker Street was of no relevance." His tone was mildly disapproving. Heads, John imagined, had rolled. His own still pounded.

"It took a review yesterday afternoon for someone rather more intelligent to wonder why Joanne Telling would be a member of a Women's Institute some twenty miles from her home. It was then that the sudden death of her son was brought to my attention. Your presence, and that of Jim Moriarty, at Richard Telling's funeral some hours previously was confirmed"

He passed John a photograph; a small warehouse under a railway arch. "James Morchase, Imports and Exports" the fading sign said.

"The registered office of Richard Telling's employer. You were found in a room at the back."

He was waiting expectantly. John sighed. "You were meant to find me, then."

"It appears so, yes. Do you recognise the place?"

It looked like a thousand other London businesses. He couldn't even guess where it might be located. "No."

"Tell me about Richard Telling, John."

Information for information. He doubted that Mycroft could do much harm with the knowledge; he could probably find it out himself anyway. John needed to know what had happened to him.

"He worked for Moriarty; he was the one who picked me up in the car I thought was yours. Stephen, he was called there."

Straight at Mycroft. He wasn't giving the man a hint of his vulnerability. "I killed him while we were getting away that night. Moriarty sent his mother to visit me; playing games. I guess Sherlock thought we'd play them better; the funeral was his idea. But he was expecting us."

Mycroft nodded, pulled out his phone and murmured a few cryptic phrases into it. John's turn again.

"What else did you find there, apart from me? Had Sherlock been there?"

"Yes." Mycroft placed his fingers together, in conscious or unconscious imitation of his brother, and watched John over them.

"Well?"

Mycroft extracted a second photograph, handed it over. Three empty hypodermic syringes on a green towel.

John pulled his sleeve up. On the inside of his elbow the puncture mark was barely visible. Not good at all. "What was it?"

"You are aware of Sherlock's recreational use of cocaine." It wasn't a question.

John stared at him, incredulous. "You think this was Sherlock's doing? Suddenly decided to do some coke with his good friend Jim? Throw a party? You think I would have joined in, with narcotics, for God's sake? Do you know your brother- either of us- at all?"

"It appears that I may know him better than you do, John." Mycroft was still watching him, hands flat on his knees. "The fingerprints on all three syringes were Sherlock's. Do you remember anything yet?"

Long fingers tight around his upper arm. The feel of the cold liquid in his vein. The frantic beating of his heart. Flashes of physical sensations, but why, how he'd felt about it, was lost. He said as much. "Cocaine wouldn't cause amnesia, or unconsciousness, not unless it was a huge dose." He didn't feel ill enough for that; hungover more than anything else. "Was it alcohol as well?"

"Residue in two of the syringes contained a relatively low concentration of cocaine. The third also contained flunitrazepam."

John was momentarily grateful that Mycroft was not an ally. It gave him someone to be furiously angry with. Not the right person, but he'd do. "You knew that and you still think this was Sherlock's doing?"

Mycroft sighed. "The syringes were not labelled in any way. The drug is tasteless in solution and would have been undetectable. It is possible that Sherlock was not aware of the contents."

"You think he'd have just injected whatever Moriarty gave him into me? Moriarty, for God's sake!"

"Trust has hardly been an issue so far, has it?" Mycroft's tone was dry.

Three seeming-identical syringes; he'd have tried one on Moriarty first. Trust, whatever Mycroft thought, was very much an issue. Was it merely chance that John had ended up with the Rohypnol? He suspected not. Hell, he wished he knew whether Sherlock was letting Jim seem to run rings around him, or whether the criminal was really three steps ahead.

He'd been given a date-rape drug. John felt tired and sick. It hadn't stopped there, not from Moriarty's message. But Sherlock must have known that he was sedated. Except there was the cocaine; probably affecting Sherlock's judgement, doubtless masking the sedative in John's system, at least for a short while. A short while might have been enough.

"Is there more?"

"Yes."

John stood up, walked around the low table to look out of the study's french windows at the garden beyond. "I'd like some fresh air."

"Of course." Mycroft unlocked the doors. "I'll have some lunch set out next door in the next quarter of an hour. We'll talk again after that. If you remember anything important beforehand, send word."

The walk wasn't long enough, however slowly he took it. All the way to the far wall, back again, his trainers leaving marks in the short grass, his shoulder aching. It must have rained last night; the night he'd missed, unconscious in Mycroft's guest room. Had Sherlock slept, after the cocaine wore off, or was he pacing somewhere, trapped?

Anthea, or whatever her name was, was almost a remembrance of normality, waiting for him at the open door. Her smile was as quick and vague as ever. John wondered if she knew what had happened to him, what she thought. He could guess the latter. Nothing said macho and desirable quite like being the drugged victim of sexual assault.

He had more serious things to worry about than the opinion of a woman he'd failed to flirt with a couple of times, but the trivial things were easier.

"Nice place you've got here."

"Yes." She looked amused. Amused was good; amused wasn't pitying or sympathetic, or whatever Mycroft had been. Calculating. If he hadn't thought that John was of some use, he would have dumped him at hospital or at home and left him there. That might have been preferable.

Self pity was unattractive. There were other reactions, like anger, like determination. He'd told Sherlock he was done with games and he'd meant it. No-one screwed around with him like this. Certainly not Jim Moriarty. And not, a quiet, insistent voice added, Sherlock Holmes, though it was going to take more than a few fingerprints to convince him that Sherlock had any part in this.

"Are you joining me for lunch?"

"No thank you."

"You do eat, I hope?"

"Very seldom." Was that a joke? That smile was almost shared. Before he could think of an appropriate reply he was faced with a buffet table and Anthea was in retreat.

The walk in the garden had gone some way to clearing his head and John found he was hungry. Odd to help himself with no-one else in the room, but he settled himself on a chair with a view of the garden and set to, wondering when he'd last eaten. Yesterday's breakfast, quite possibly.

His meal was briefly interrupted by a man coming in to ask if he had everything he needed. Other than that he was left alone. Someone must have been watching, though, because as soon as he'd wiped his fingers on the luxurious napkin and started to wonder what he should do next, Mycroft appeared.

"I trust that that was adequate to your needs? Is there anything else that you would like?"

"No. Thank you." Automatic politeness; he was still angry but the meal had been very good.

"In that case may I suggest that we resume? I will have coffee brought in shortly."

John gestured reluctant assent. Get this over with. He had things to do.

The curved inside arch of the railway bridge was bare, greying brick with a fluorescent tube hanging loosely from the ceiling. There were flimsy partitions at either end, a shoddy desk up against one wall with the ragged green towel and discarded needles lying on top, and a battered swivel chair. The centre of the room was taken up by a rusting iron bedstead with two bare and stained single mattresses piled on top of it. Clothes were scattered on the floor; John's clothes, his one good suit that he'd worn to the funeral.

John turned the photos in his hands. The fine brandy and silk sheets of the Essex farmhouse had been unwholesome. This was just sordid.

"That's where I was found." Where Moriarty's message had been recorded. Where the three of them had, apparently, mainlined coke, done whatever they'd done under the drug's influence, and then two of them had left him there.

"Yes."

"I don't remember it." Surely he ought to remember something by now. Unless- the thought occured to him for the first time- he was being set up by Mycroft and none of this had happened.

Another photo; a close up of one of the legs of the bedstead, thin cord tied round it, a foot or so hanging loose. The other end had once been a loop but the cord had been severed just past the knot.

"There were marks on your wrists and ankles, gone now," Mycroft said with even less intonation than usual. "It appeared that the cord had been pulled tight but there was no indication of struggling."

He glanced at the hand holding the photo. "The cut on the back of your hand, and a similar one on the back of one ankle, suggest that the bonds were cut either carelessly or in a hurry."

John dropped the photo on the table in front of him. "What else?"

"Would you like coffee?"

"I'd like to get this done, Mycroft. If you don't mind. What else?"

"You may find," Mycroft warned, without any noticeable sign of concern, "some of the detail distressing."

Everything revealed so far and now he was warned? That did worry him. "Get on with it."

"Very well. Tests of the mattress found traces of your semen. From the distribution it would seem that you adopted the face down position after the relevant event took place."

He could feel the unwanted heat across his cheeks. "There really is no end to your snooping, is there?"

"I told you, Doctor. I intend to find Sherlock. He disappeared immediately after whatever happened in that room and I will find out every detail that I can. Sparing your blushes is not on my agenda."

Sherlock was missing, with Moriarty; every time he was reminded of that he felt cold. He'd damn well know everything that Mycroft did, whatever it cost.

"Go on, then. I won't object again."

The look he got for that was distinctly sceptical, but Mycroft continued, steady and unemotional.

"Two men had penetrative sex with you yesterday. One of them was Sherlock." A beat. "Neither of them used condoms."

He'd said that he wouldn't protest, and he didn't. He didn't curse, either. John wasn't going to trust Mycroft with any inkling of what he was going to do when he caught up with the missing men. It might well not fit with Mycroft's plans at all.

"I suppose," he said, dully, "you can't tell what I'm at risk of."

"Not for certain, no. The limited tests that could be done showed nothing of concern."

He pushed that aside for a moment.

"So that's it." That was enough. He pushed himself up and the twinge in his shoulder reminded him. He sat down again.

"What about my shoulder?"

"Your shoulder has been cut repeatedly with a surgical scalpel. The knife was lying on the floor." Mycroft extracted another photo. John frowned at the narrow marks oozing blood.

"It's a pattern. Does it mean anything?

"Yes." Mycroft waited for a while as John puzzled, then sighed, pulled a pad and pen towards himself.

"Thus." He sketched quickly, turned it round for John to see. Once he'd made out the first set of lines, it was easy to see where an additional curve and line had been added.

"The second set of cuts are shallower." Mycroft paused. "There were two sets of fingerprints on the knife."

John said nothing.

"The blood had pooled but not spread. You hadn't changed position significantly by the time you were found."

"Was I unconscious?" John asked, quietly.

"Impossible to be sure. You may well have been heavily sedated at that point; it is unlikely that you wouldn't have moved around otherwise."

He imagined that he'd been conscious. What would have been the fun of it, otherwise?

Mycroft's voice sounded, for the first time, genuinely hesitant. "It would be possible to arrange for a skin graft."

Not a minor surgery; painful and temporarily disabling. John ran his finger along the photo, the raw lines. He remembered something, now; the pain cutting sharp through the sleepiness and Sherlock's voice, terrifyingly angry. "Will it scar?"

"I am advised that permanent marks are likely to be faint. The cuts were deep but the blade was extremely sharp."

"I'll live with it." He hadn't time for hospital, drugs and the risks of graft complications.

"I'd like to go home now."

"No."

"You can't keep me here."

Mycroft smiled at him, a little, at that. "Of course I can. You will stay here until I find Sherlock."

"I've told you all I can. If I remember more, I'll call."

"Doctor Watson. The two most dangerous men in Britain have made their joint claims on you quite clear, though whether they intend to fight over you or share I have no idea. Whatever your personal preference might be, I don't intend to allow them anything that they want.

"Anthea will show you around the house. I am sure that you will be quite comfortable."

He stood up.

"One last thing. Have you any idea, any idea at all, as to what my brother thinks that he's doing?"

John remembered Sherlock telling him that his methods would be indirect. "I think he's still hunting." And still trying to keep John alive. He still believed that. Run, Sherlock had said...or Moriarty had.

"Do you?" Mycroft sounded surprised. "I have a rather different opinion, but yours is more...loyal. I strongly suggest that you consider where your loyalties should lie, after yesterday."

Not with Mycroft Holmes. John wasn't staying here a minute longer than he had to. He had every intention of tracking down both the men who'd drugged him and carved their initials into his shoulder before anyone else did. He was done with loyalties, right now. John Watson was seriously pissed off.

 

 **Part 6- Object Lesson**

John tapped at the ground floor window twice, waited. He was about to try again when the curtains moved.

A finger to his lips, he waited for recognition, then gestured firmly behind him and backed up into the darkness. After a couple of minutes Lestrade came out of his front door, wrapped up against the rain, and walked back to meet him in the dark side road.

"John! Bloody hell, man, we've been looking for you everywhere! Is Sherlock with you?"

"No." Sherlock was still missing then. A small hope extinguished. "I need to talk to you, Greg, somewhere warm and dry and away from cameras." His jumper was already soaked through.

"The flat's clean of bugs. Had a couple of chaps from the security service going over it two days ago."

John snorted at that. "Not the flat."

"OK." He could tell Lestrade was studying him, wondering what the hell was going on. "I know somewhere."

Somewhere was a small terraced house ten minutes' walk through the back streets. The woman who answered the door was dressed up and startled.

"Greg! God, I thought you were my date come early! Is Paul all right?"

"Far as I know, not that I've seen him for a bit. I've got a favour to ask, Gwyneth. Can I borrow your spare room for the evening? John here and I need to talk and we can't use the flat or the pub."

"Or the station?" She frowned at John. "I'm done with police business, Greg. And I'm going out."

"Please, Gwyneth. It's a big favour. I'll owe you one."

"You already owe me considerably more than one, Greg Lestrade." She sighed. "Go on then. Coffee and biscuits in the kitchen; wash up after yourselves. Don't let me find you here when I get back. And if your friend's not got a coat then there's one of Paul's old ones in the wardrobe, and dry clothes in the drawers."

"Thanks, Gwen." Lestrade was smiling.

"Just go hide in the spare room till we're gone. I like this bloke; I'm not explaining a houseful of strange men away to him."

They sat on the bed in silence. John was just as glad of it. It had seemed simple when he'd planned this; he'd tell Greg everything, but now that it came to it he wasn't sure how he could.

The doorbell rang, the front door opened, and after a flurry of voices closed to silence. "Grab some clothes and we can go down. Want a coffee?"

"Please." John followed Greg downstairs. "She seemed nice. Ex-girlfriend?"

"What? Gwen? No. She was married to a friend of mine in the Force. They broke up some years ago but we've got mutual friends so I still see Gwyneth occasionally. I haven't been here since Paul left, though. You want somewhere where no-one will look for us, this is it."

John couldn't fault that at all. Lestrade was at least taking this seriously.

Greg had filled the kettle, was hunting in cupboards. "So where do I start, John? Where have you been, who are you hiding from or where's Sherlock?" He pulled down a couple of mugs.

"I'll answer them all, as far as I can. But first you can tell me what the security people are doing in your flat."

"That one's easy. Turns out Sherlock's brother's something to do with national security. He thinks Sherlock's disappearance might be related to his work, so we've got MI5 in on the hunt."

Greg was fingering the phone in his pocket. "You ought to be talking to him, John. He'd come out here if you don't want to go to the Yard."

"I'm sure he would," John said. "You want to know who I'm running from? Mycroft Holmes is top of the list. It's taken me five days to escape from his people. I'm not going near him again."

"Mycroft? That's not right." Lestrade looked confused. "He's been looking for you- both of you."

"He's been looking for Sherlock. He's known exactly where I was since Thursday afternoon. I can show you the place on a map if you like. Believe me, Greg. Mycroft wants to find Sherlock but he's not telling you anything like the truth."

"Top of your list, huh? So who else are you hiding from?" Lestrade didn't look convinced, not yet.

"Jim Moriarty. The police, I guess; even if Mycroft doesn't set you on me, there's the poor sod I mugged in Starbucks' toilets for the taxi fare over here." He paused, wondering just how honest he was planning to get. He paused too long.

"And." Lestrade wasn't unobservant. "Who's the one you don't want to tell me about?"

"Maybe Sherlock, I suppose. I really don't know what he's up to right now, Greg. The others I'm sure of." He took the fresh coffee, sipped gratefully. "I'm not intending to hide for long, though. I'm going to find them before they find me." He moved through to the living room in search of a chair and the other man followed.

"You think Sherlock's up to to something?" Lestrade shook his head. "Are you sure? We found his dumped phone, and yours, and signs of a struggle; there was a knife with your blood on and your ripped jacket, down by the river front. To be honest, when we heard nothing from anyone we expected the worst, though Mycroft insisted he'd be too valuable to kill. He didn't rate your chances highly."

How convenient. Had Mycroft ever intended to let him go? John couldn't quite figure Mycroft as a cold blooded killer of innocent bystanders, but then the man had made it clear that he didn't regard John as innocent. Maybe it had been no more than a last ditch contingency plan; he imagined that Mycroft was fond of those.

Still, Mycroft had faked a violent abduction scene for the police, and he could prove that. He guessed that Mycroft and those of his staff not currently receiving hospital treatment would be looking for him with a great deal of urgency right now. The shrill of Greg's phone didn't surprise him at all.

It was a long conversation, though Lestrade's side of it was unhelpful; surprise, disbelief and finally agreement. His eyes were boring into John's face as he talked.

Finally Lestrade hung up and there was silence.

"Well?"

"Seems John Watson and Jim Moriarty were tracked down to a warehouse just under two hours ago. Your men were heavily armed and in the resulting fire fight you both escaped."

John closed his eyes for a second, anger throbbing. "He's claiming I'm working with Moriarty?"

"It does explain how Moriarty got close enough to Sherlock to abduct him. And what he was doing in your flat when Sherlock found him. And, of course, why you were prepared to put up with Sherlock's idiosyncrasies as a flatmate, and to go rather further than that. And it certainly explains what happened at the swimming pool."

He looked tired and indecisive.

"I like you, John. I meant it about you being good for Sherlock. They say a good copper trusts his instincts, but if there's one thing that man's taught me, it's to trust the evidence and nothing else. I know Mycroft's credentials. He wants to find his brother. I can't see any reason why he'd set you up, get you out of the way, when you could be helping us find Sherlock. Want to help me out with that?"

John had imagined that explanations would be awkward; he'd not thought that Lestrade might simply not believe him. Too late now; only the truth and all of it would do.

Cut to the chase. He started to strip off his wet clothes, the pain as his shoulder twisted easily ignored now after a few days' healing. Half naked, he turned around.

"What the hell did that?" Lestrade had climbed to his feet.

"If Mycroft is to be believed, it's where Jim Moriarty and Sherlock Holmes each had a go inscribing their initials during a heavy session of sex, IV cocaine and Rohypnol."

A silence. He turned around, started to pull the dry clothes on. Lestrade looked utterly floored.

"Do you believe that?"

"I believe most of it, yes. The sex- it's happened before. The drugs- I'm sure they were in my bloodstream. I don't remember how they got there. The knife- I want some explanations, Greg."

He pulled the dry jacket on, sat down. "Mycroft doesn't think Sherlock's been abducted. He thinks he's keeping Jim Moriarty's bed warm, and he desperately wants both of them found before they do something appalling for fun. More appalling. But it's easier to manipulate you into hunting them than it is to try and convince you of that, so he set up the kidnapping evidence and kept me out of the way."

"You did the same." Lestrade had sat down again, was watching him, face bleak. "Your Baker Street break-in. You screwed around with the forensics before we got there. Washing your fucking sheets, John. I gave that damn investigation top priority because I was worried sick about keeping you safe, and now you're telling me that you lied to me."

For exactly Mycroft's reasons. John grimanced unhappily. "Yeah, we did. I'm sorry about that. It was a real risk, though; it still is. The man's a monster."

"So that's what you're telling me that you and Sherlock do for fun, is it? Pick up monsters?" Greg's voice was soft, disgusted. John resisted the urge to tell the man to mind his own sodding business; he was the one who'd come to find Lestrade tonight.

"Sherlock doesn't do hearts and flowers, Greg. He doesn't do couples. What he does is Jim Moriarty with me there to watch his back, and I guess I pick up the crumbs. Except that last time what I picked up instead was an IV cocktail, a bit of mutilation, God knows what STDs, amnesia and a cute little farewell message from Jim. And Sherlock's missing. I need to find them."

"Real sob story. But I don't do domestics. Your boyfriend runs off with another man, it's your problem." Lestrade was thoroughly pissed off.

"This other man is wanted for murder and terrorism and kidnapping. Don't you think you might want to at least help me look?" He took a breath. "If Mycroft gets there first God knows what he'll do. He called an air strike over Essex last week. He's a lot more desperate now."

"You're claiming that was Mycroft's doing?"

"He was hoping to kill Moriarty. He missed by about five minutes."

"Sure." Lestrade was shaking his head, slowly.

He'd explained this wrong. "You're not getting it. This isn't just about what turns Sherlock on. They're fighting it out, pushing for weaknesses, both of them. There hasn't been a single moment when Moriarty's left himself vulnerable. If there had been, we'd have taken him out."

"So what are you doing here now?"

"i can't dodge Mycroft and find them, not on my own. I need your help."

"Right." Lestrade picked up John's discarded shirt. "Whose blood is this?"

"One of Mycroft's people, maybe two. I took a knife from the kitchen. I don't think anyone was seriously hurt."

"No? There's blood on your face as well and it isn't yours." He dropped the shirt, sat back in the chair.

"So I have two stories. One says that John Watson, who arrived so conveniently from overseas, who has stuck like a limpet for months to a man who no-one else can tolerate for half an hour, who has made himself so invaluable to Sherlock's work for no reason and no reward ; that John Watson has been working for Jim Moriarty all along. That when his cover was blown prematurely Watson decides on one last attempt to use his position to cause trouble by coming to me, cold and wet and forlorn and harmless, and sowing a bit of discord"

He sighed. "That's one story. Nasty, but it hangs together pretty well. The other is that Sherlock Holmes has been having rough sex and sharing drugs with not only you but in a threesome with a psychopathic murderer. Sherlock gets kidnapped by his new boyfriend and at exactly the same time you get abducted by Sherlock's brother, who turns out to be a second criminal mastermind prone to using the Special Forces to blow up bits of countryside without anyone noticing.

"It's only a few days since I told you about Sherlock and cocaine. Writing it into your fantasy really wasn't smart, John. Sherlock might take drugs but he'd never lose control like that. He'd never hurt you."

He was leaning forward now, eyes sharp on John.

"Can't arrest you, can I? There will be snipers by now waiting outside Gwen's door. I should never have brought you here."

"Bloody hell, Greg, listen to me!" John knew he'd lost. Lestrade was watching him as if he might attack at any moment. "I don't know that Sherlock hurt me. I don't know what happened. I don't remember. Moriarty was in control."

"Changing your story now." Lestrade shook his head. "Damn. I should have gone along with it, shouldn't I, Watson? I thought you'd be smart enough to spot it, but you really aren't that clever. God knows how you fooled Sherlock. I guess he just wanted to like you. You're bloody good at that, at least. We all liked you."

He stood up, walked to the darkened window. Spoke without turning round."What are you going to do now? Take yourself another hostage or just shoot me?"

"Will you stop being so fucking stupid! There are no bloody snipers, just me. No wonder you need Sherlock to solve your cases for you! Dumb fucking idiot!"

He dropped his voice, trying to stay rational despite his frustration and anger. "Look, I can't make you believe me. Just at least watch out for Mycroft. He thinks Sherlock's switched sides and he hasn't. That I'm sure of."

"No, he hasn't. There's only one traitor here."

Temper snapped. "Fuck you, then." John grabbed the loaned raincoat and stormed out of the house.

Lestrade would be on the phone straight away; he needed to get outside the cordon they'd throw up while they dealt with the hostage situation. Maybe, just maybe Greg would have second thoughts when they found he'd been alone. Maybe he'd at least question Mycroft's stories. Most likely coming to Lestrade had done no good at all.

He'd do this on his own, then. Somehow.

After the Essex debacle John had spent a late night with Google Maps and Street View, had finally traced the house that Moriarty had used in London. He'd intended to tell Sherlock next morning but Joanne Telling had arrived and he'd been preoccupied after that. Sherlock hadn't been taken there; no reason for him or any of the others to know its location. It was the only place that he could think of to start.

The taxi dropped him fifty yards away from the gated alley. He could see the red blink of the camera on the high wall trained on the gates. If he got over the fence directly under the camera he had a good chance of going unseen. An eight foot high fence wasn't going to stop him today. The spikes were more for show than serious deterrence but they were enough to hold the borrowed coat in place when it was tossed upwards, and both were enough to hold his weight as he scrambled up and landed with a roll that made his shoulder complain on the other side.

The square was silent. As he walked close against the neat hedges in the gathering darkness the house he was heading for came into view, just as a light turned on in the third floor.

The entrance to the underground carpark was gated again but this time with a full portcullis from roof to floor. Before he could move on engine noise had him pulling back into the bushes on one side of the carpark entrance. The car turned into the entrance and the gates parted. John stooped low and followed it through, then ducked straight behind a pillar. From there he watched two men, one familiar from his last visit, carry shopping bags straight into the lift. A great deal of shopping; several people were living here. For the first time he began to hope that he might have found what he was looking for.

The men closed the lift doors and John watched the indicator stop at the first floor. He needed a plan. For a second he contemplated starting at the bottom and working his way up but this wasn't an action movie. There were going to be several men in the house; they would have guns and CCTV and the ability to shout loudly on spotting intruders. He couldn't expect them to let him simply walk up behind any of them and chances were that none of them would make useful hostages for Moriarty's compliance.

The only hostage of any value would be Jim himself. The light had gone on in the library, and he didn't know the rest of the house at all, so he'd have to work on the assumption that Moriarty was there. He would be astonished if the house wasn't covered with cameras and the person supposed to be watching the feed wasn't doing so. Nothing that he'd seen of Moriarty's operations suggested anything but terrifying efficiency.

Speed over stealth; he'd make a run for it. Eight flights of stairs, a corridor, another at right-angles, through the waiting room, down the next short corridor and into the library, and hope that Moriarty's instructions about shooting at intruders were John Watson- specific. They should be; the man must know there was a chance that he'd get here. (Yes, of course it was a trap. John wasn't stupid, just desperate.) A bullet in the back from a minion was not, he hoped, in Moriarty's plans for his eventual demise.

He dropped the ripped coat, stripped off Gwen's ex-husband's jacket, retied his laces, and briefly regretted the absence of the kitchen knife that had let him hack his way out of Mycroft's place. He'd had nowhere to conceal it and he'd naively thought that finding Lestrade would provide a measure of safety.

The men sorting out the shopping might at least be slightly distracted; he'd lose that tiny advantage if he waited. Stop thinking about all the things that could go wrong. Go.

John heard nothing but the sound of his feet as he took the stairs two and three at a time. He burst out onto the third floor landing; no-one, but as he turned along the corridor a bullet went past him, the explosion loud enough to shake the walls. He kept running, the ringing in his ears taking several seconds to ease off enough to hear the shouts.

No more bullets and he was through the waiting room, into the corridor, barely registering the man at the other end. Into the library. He slammed the heavy oak door behind him, turned long enough to turn the iron key, then leaned against it, panting, as he took in the contents of the room.

The gun first, small and aimed at his heart. Then the man holding it; Jim Moriarty, apparently just stood up from one of the leather armchairs by the fire. The other was still occupied; Sherlock, turned to watch John's entrance.

"Hi," John raised a hand to his flatmate, his breath slowing back to something like twice normal. Moriarty was coming towards him slowly, gun steady.

"Not," John told himself, "a bullet. Not from Jim Moriarty." He pushed himself hard away from the door, towards the man a bare six feet away. Grabbed the wrist holding the gun in that fraction of a second when the gun could have gone off and didn't, other hand coming up for a blow to the chin and Moriarty was unbalanced, was over backwards with John on top, wrists pinned.

Moriarty looked away from him, towards Sherlock. "I thought," he complained, "you'd found a petsitter. Yet here he is again. Call your animal off."

"I suggest that you back off, John." Sherlock's voice was deep.

"Following your suggestions hasn't been working out particularly well for me recently." John let go of the hand not holding the gun just long enough to smash his fist into Moriarty's face, then to take the weapon from the unresisting fingers. Someone was firing into the lock of the library door. "Cameras in here, Sherlock?"

"Over the door and one to your right."

"Mikes?"

"On the cameras. No extra ones."

"Good." He hit Moriarty again, feeling cheekbones break, rose far enough to turn the man over and to drop back heavily onto his thighs, a sudden memory of the last time he'd done that making him shudder. Then he pulled the right wrist back and put the barrel of the gun against the fragile bones, looked up to the camera over the door.

"I'll take his hand off and leave him alive to chase you down. Back off." A pause. " Ten. Nine. Eight." At six the noise outside the door stopped. "Thank you," he said politely and shot both the cameras out.

After the echoes subsided there was silence for a few seconds. Then Sherlock spoke.

"This is all very impressive, John, but it isn't actually helping us get out of here." John almost savoured the irritation in the man's voice. He'd been looking forward to this bit.

"I'm sorry, Sherlock. Did you think this was a rescue attempt?" He hadn't taken his eyes off the motionless man beneath him.

"Ah. And what exactly would you call it?"

"This is an information-gathering exercise. And this," he climbed to his feet and slammed the toe of his boot as hard as he could between the man's legs, waited for the scream to subside, "is an object lesson."

He dropped to his knees again, patted the curled-up and whimpering man's pockets, pulled out the phone and tapped a number in one- handed, didn't press dial. Then he turned for the first time to look straight at Sherlock.

"You and I are going to have a conversation."

And didn't he have Sherlock's attention now! The man was shaking his head slightly.

"You are infuriatingly proficient at precisely the wrong times, John. My brother was supposed to have you secured."

"That was your doing?"

"No. Just Mycroft's obsession with control. But you were safe enough there, I thought. Holding one man shouldn't have been beyond his capacity."

Sherlock sighed. "But no, you fought your way out of there, and into here. On your own, apparently. That isn't like you. Why not go to Lestrade?"

"I did." John was sour. "Mycroft got his story in first. I'm public enemy number two, right now. All Greg wanted to know was if I was going to shoot him."

"That wouldn't have improved your temper." A hint of a smile. "But here you are, and I suppose I shall have to deal with you. An information gathering mission, but you've rendered poor Jim incapable of telling you anything coherent, so you must want data from me. What's this conversation that you've risked your life for going to be about?"

"What do you think? I want to know what happened."

"After you passed out? Jim recorded his message and we left. Your pulse and breathing were both steady and Mycroft was sure to pick you up shortly; it was much safer to leave you there than to bring you along. Jim is remarkably unpredictable at times."

"I'm not so interested in after I passed out, Sherlock. I want to know what happened before."

Sherlock frowned at him. "You don't remember? Why wouldn't you... Hell!" He swung his hand round hard against the wall. "He lied to me! And I didn't pick it up! I was so irritated about the hypodermic switch, and his gloating- it was an amnesiac, not just a sedative. Stupid. Stupid. Which one?"

"Rohypnol."

"Yes, of course. So what do you remember?"

"Nothing definite past the van from the church."

"Ah. And what do you know?"

"Mycroft gave me a full forensic report. It's pretty good on the whole 'who did what' but a bit lacking in minor details like 'why the fuck'."

Moriarty whimpered loud in the silence and John kicked him in the ribs.

"Don't kill him." Sherlock sounded seriously worried.

"Why not?"

"The arrangements that he has in place are elegant and almost impossible to prevent. A lot of people could die if you take your revenge."

"A lot of people will die if he goes free. He kills people, Sherlock. It's what he does. He'll keep on doing it until someone stops him." There was blood bubbling between the prone man's lips. Probably from the broken nose rather than internal bleeding. He'd have to to do considerably more damage to finish the man off.

"Explanations, Sherlock. I'll decide what to do about him when I've heard what you've got to say."

"That shoulder's clearly not troubling you much. Any heart problems, breathing difficulties?"

"No. Keep to the point."

"This is the point, John." He seemed mildly irritated. "You came to no significant harm. This response might be considered excessive."

"It's not bloody excessive! I could have contracted HIV, for a start. From either of you. From the bloody needle, for all I know."

"Don't be histrionic, John. I have no infections of any kind, and if Jim was HIV positive then three quarters of the medical research facilities in this country would find themselves researching a cure. He's as careful about that as he is about any other risk."

"And yet there he is." John looked down at Moriarty, eyes closed, breathing fast. "Not looking so bloody careful now."

Sherlock snorted. "You're a force of nature, John Watson. No-one's plans survive contact with you for long."

"Tell me what happened."

"Did you know that you have blood on your face?" Sherlock licked his lips. Nervous? Maybe not.

"Greg mentioned it. Why won't you tell me?"

"Which would you prefer to hear? The version in which you're an eager participant in your own corruption or the one in which you're our helpless victim?"

He suspected that Sherlock was mocking him. There was an easy outlet for his anger right now; he saw Sherlock wince as his foot connected again with Moriarty's ribs.

"Will you please stop doing that, John! If he loses consciousness it's going to make negotiation rather difficult."

"Negotiation? I don't have any intention of negotiating. No doubt I ought to find this uncharacteristic concern for your fellow man touching but actually it just makes me want to puke. I don't care whether I was victim or participant- just tell me which."

"You care more than is rational, and the answer is both and neither. The details won't tell you anything meaningful about yourself, or me, or Jim, that you didn't already. I don't intend to discuss it."

Sherlock smug, superior and comfortable; John wasn't going to let him stay that way.

"Really? I suggest you rethink that. I don't need the gun to put you down there with him" And was that a hint of a bloody smile at that suggestion? His voice rose.

"I'm not playing games, Sherlock. I'm not going to wrestle you into the carpet and try to rip your clothes off. I'm going to hit you till you stay down and then break a couple of your ribs. And then ask you again. What happened?"

Sherlock was no longer smiling. "Very well. But you won't thank me for it."

"I don't expect to. Get on with it."

"You took the cocaine voluntarily."

He'd thought he was ready for all the possibilities, but he found that he wasn't. "Why the hell would I have done that?"

"I persuaded you; it was a pathetically small dose and I told you that I'd be entirely in control. He wasn't going to let you stay otherwise and you didn't want to leave me with him. You were curious anyway, after your experiences with morphine, though you wouldn't admit it. But mainly I kissed you into it. You are...were... remarkably susceptible that way."

Bastard. "So why were you taking it?"

"Come on, John. Cocaine. Moriarty had never touched it before. This was a round I could win easily. And the sex would be interesting."

"So did you win easily?"

Sherlock glanced at the gun in John's hand. "It doesn't appear so at the moment, no."

"OK. We all had our shots. What then?"

A quick, careful smile. "You liked it. It was barely enough to do more than heighten my senses. Jim was definitely high but his control is extraordinary. But you were flying, and quite tangibly grateful to both of us."

John winced. "I get the idea. Who tied me up?"

"It was a joint effort. You were extremely co-operative."

"And did we discuss condoms?"

"Not as such, no." Sherlock had the grace to look discomforted. "You were certainly aware of what was going on and raised no objection."

Of course he hadn't. He'd been sodding high. "Who might I have been objecting to, at this point?"

"Me, at first. But you weren't ready to stop when I did, so Jim got invited to take over."

"Then?" There was going to be a knife in this story somewhere.

"You went quiet. I thought you were just flagging; you'd come pretty hard and we'd taken our time. Cocaine highs don't last all that long; I assumed you were coming down. From the way you were rather languidly trying to fellate my fingers it seemed you were still happy enough. Then I closed my eyes for a second and you bit me."

He held up his left hand. Raw looking scabs ringed the first two fingers, just below the knuckles. John subtracted five days' healing and suppressed a wince.

"By the time I'd got free of you, he'd finished." He looked down at the still figure. "It was a diabolically effective move. Every time I looked at you I was going to know it was there. I lost my temper, which amused him, and I made some threats which he thought hilarious, and by the time I looked round to see why you'd stopped swearing you'd fallen asleep.

"That's when I realised he'd switched the drugs. Temazepam, he said. I couldn't rouse you and I wasn't prepared to let him win that comprehensively. A couple more cuts; you barely twitched and it would heal just as well."

His voice was carefully neutral. "As a solution it was definitely sub-optional."

"Just a bit." John didn't trust himself to say more, not right now. Moriarty was stirring, trying to speak. No, to laugh at them, his bloodied mouth grinning. John turned away from him, smashed a heel backwards. He didn't react to the scream, but Sherlock was staring down past him.

"You can't kick him to death, John. It's not how it works."

"It's not the way you two choose for it to work. Unfortunately you brought me into this and I have had enough of your stupid game."

He turned and dropped to one knee, his hand in Moriarty's hair, dragging the damaged face upwards.

"This man intends to have me murdered, Sherlock. Are you going to ask me for his life?"

Sherlock took one long look at Jim, then up to John's face. "No."

"Right." John let go, stood up, took a step backwards, straightened his arm and fired.

"Barricade the door," he said into the gunshot's echoes. Sherlock was already moving to push the table up against the library door as firing started from the other side. John pulled the phone out from his pocket, called the pre-dialled number.

"Greg. Sherlock and I are on the third floor of 12 Northumbrian Place. Moriarty is dead. There's a lot of men with guns trying to get to us. Tell Mycroft to send in his people and for God's sake make sure they know who they are meant to be shooting at. And next time I see you I'm going to punch you in the face."

He snapped the phone shut, went to help Sherlock with a bookcase. "I suggest you start working out how to defuse whatever he's left behind."

"Already onto it, of course. Give me that phone."

When the smoke had finally cleared and they had been escorted to the edge of the cordon, John had nearly got his chance to hit Lestrade. Sherlock had stepped into the way. "No police statements," he'd announced. "Not now, not ever. Get my brother to make it disappear. John and I are done with it. We're going home." And they had.

The milk had gone off during their respective captivities. John could hear talking as he came back up the stairs from getting more. He froze for a second, recognising the voice, then took the rest of the steps at a run.

"Get out!"

Mycroft turned towards him, umbrella between his knees.

"Doctor Watson. You may be interested to know that Anthea is still in hospital."

"I hope she has a speedy recovery. Now get out of my house."

"We have not finished our discussion." Mycroft looked across to Sherlock for support.

"It appears that we have. John doesn't want you here, so you're leaving." Sherlock scooped up the nearly full cup of black tea, walked through to tip it down the sink. Called back, "John will throw you out if you don't leave voluntarily, Mycroft. I imagine it will be both undignified and uncomfortable. I will make a point of watching."

John followed the stiff back down the stairs. Mycroft turned at the threshold. "After the savagery you have displayed, you can be sure that your control over my brother will not be tolerated."

Control? "You screwed up, Mycroft. No-one gives a fuck about your opinion. Don't come back." He slammed the door, headed back up the stairs.

"Thanks."

"For what?" Sherlock was leafing through the unopened mail.

"For backing me up."

Sherlock looked up, put the post down.

"Supporting you against Mycroft is hardly sufficient. I am not sure yet what if anything will be."

"What does that mean?" John put the kettle on, came back to sit down in the armchair "Guilt? Gratitude? Doesn't seem quite like you, somehow."

"Neither." Sherlock was curled on the couch, long legs tucked round him. "When I thought you'd charged into there to rescue me I was quite annoyed at your stupidity. Jim wasn't going to kill me; I'd have walked out of there eventually but you had to be unnecessarily heroic and get yourself captured or shot."

He pulled his knees up tighter. "When I found out why you'd actually done it..." His eyes were intense. "You killed Moriarty, John, because he seriously pissed you off. I'm still waiting to find out what you plan to do about me."

Oh.

"I shot Moriarty because he was a psychotic killer and someone needed to do it. But yes, you both treated me like a piece of property to squabble over. He mutilated me, and so did you. He's dead and I don't know what to do about you, Sherlock. Maybe breaking a couple of your ribs would help but somehow I doubt it. Maybe I ought to just leave."

"Obviously I won't make the same mistake twice." Sherlock was definite.

"MIstake? That's how you see it?"

"It was a mistake. I could have done what you did at any time in the last few days. I didn't and you did. I let him set the context for my choices."

He flashed a tired smile. "Jim and I; we are-were- inclined to treat people like property.The interesting ones, at least. The rest are just cases."

"That's not a mistake, Sherlock. It's a character defect. Why should I think it's going to change?"

"Because you will leave otherwise." Eyes met his. "I want to tell you that you can't leave. That I won't permit it. But I learn. I'm not Jim Moriarty. So I'm asking you to stay. You can leave tomorrow, next week, next year, if you want to. But stay now."

"Stay for what? To run after you on cases, do your laundry, drink tea and swap clever remarks, all the time with your bloody brand carved on my shoulder? I don't think I can do that any more."

Sherlock had pulled himself tight into a bundle on the sofa. "What did Mycroft say to you when he left?"

"How do you know he said anything?"

"From the look you gave me when you came back up. What did he say?"

"He said that he wouldn't let me control you. God knows why he thought I might have a hope of doing that."

Sherlock looked momentarily surprised, then thoughtful. "That's possible. It would provide you with some guarantee of my behaviour."

John's heart skipped a beat. "Why the hell would you even think of agreeing to anything like that? And don't tell me it's just to keep me around, because that isn't even close to enough."

"I'd probably like it." Sherlock flashed a smile. "Provided that you weren't being stupid, and I could always tell you when you were doing that. You're not so quiet when you take charge. It's interesting."

"Your crazily weird libido has already got you in far too much trouble already, Sherlock. I am not being responsible for you. Absolutely not. That's not what these scars mean. I don't want you on a short lead. I don't want you at all. You can damn well learn to be a decent human being and make your own bloody decisions."

Somehow the ball that was Sherlock on the couch managed to contract even tighter. John had never seen him actually miserable. He wasn't sure how it made him feel. "I'm not going to go anywhere tonight. I haven't anywhere to go. Just leave it, for now." And he headed off for a very long shower.

 

It was a week later. Sherlock was doing something with a microscope and notebook. John was sorting out the bills and wondering if "being kidnapped by the megalomaniac brother of my insane flatmate" would be considered extenuating circumstances for missing a credit card payment and, with rather more anxiety, whether Lestrade's invitation to dinner tomorrow would likely lead to a conviction for assault on a police officer or whether it would just be awkward.

He became aware that Sherlock had stopped scribbling and was looking at him.

"What?"

"You sighed. Twice."

"Not bloody surprising. You've been tapping that damn pencil on the desk for at least half an hour."

"You haven't sighed since you killed Jim."

"One day," John pointed out, "you're going to say that in front of the wrong person and you'll be doing your own cooking and cleaning for the next ten to fifteen years. What does it matter?"

"Your mental states are pretty unsophisticated, John. You can't think I'm exasperating and wicked at the same time."

"Why not? Your late unlamented buddy was both."

"No," Sherlock was looking pleased with himself. "Jim was irritating. Exasperation is a more domestic emotion."

"So you think I've forgiven you because you're annoying me? God, you're optimistic."

"I'm right. How's the shoulder? You're clearly sleeping better which suggests that you're able to lie on your back again."

"It's better, yes. Why?"

"You should be up for a bit of strenuous exercise, then."

John shook his head, unbelieving. "Just like that? Now?"

"Now is good. You're not busy. Nor am I."

It wasn't like he hadn't been thinking about it. He'd told himself maybe months, if he felt he could trust again, if they were both still interested by then. Maybe longer. Not a week.

He didn't trust Sherlock. Not yet. Not at all. Sherlock wanted what Sherlock wanted, not what might be good for John. Sherlock had wanted Jim Moriarty, and he'd completely failed to protect John from the worst of the man's viciousness.

Of course, in the end John had looked out for himself. Turned out he was quite good at that. His eyes flickered over the lean frame. Now, six months, six years- Sherlock might claim to learn but he wouldn't change. John would have to keep looking out for himself.

He could do that. He took a breath.

"No more of this catalyst crap. You want to screw criminal masterminds; you're on your own. Absolutely no drugs. No trying to kiss me into bad decisions. And there's nothing on my shoulder except a handful of fading knife scars. Understood?"

"Entirely." Sherlock flashed a smile. "Now?"

John sighed again, earning a raised eyebrow from Sherlock. "This had better be good. Though it can hardly be worse than last time. Okay, I suppose. Now."

Kissing Sherlock no longer felt like a miracle. Feeling his arousal hard against John's thigh wasn't some privilege beyond imagining, but only Sherlock's lust, welcome, no doubt of that, but something to take pleasure in, not to be pathetically grateful for.

Sherlock felt it, lifting his mouth from John's to grumble,"You're harder to impress, now."

"Good," He was done with making do with crumbs. The rival he wasn't ever going to outshine he'd shot dead instead and if John was still too quiet for Sherlock then he'd got a good book to go back to reading instead.

"Not," Sherlock murmured, amused, a surprisingly heavy weight on top of him, "quiet at all."

"Damn right." His hands pulled at clothing. "Shift a bit- yes. There. Keep still." His fingers curled, tugged gently, and Sherlock moved with them, was pushing fast against his hand. "I said... oh, never mind. You're not going to do what you're told, are you?"

"You had your chance. I offered." Sherlock was ripping John's shirt open with one hand, propped up on an elbow above him.

"That wouldn't have lasted five minutes. Rather like you. Slow down, for God's sake."

"Last time was slow. This time fast is good." A hand in John's flies had him tightening his own grip. He didn't remember last time. If that was even what Sherlock had meant.

"Last time with me or last time?"

"Same thing." Sherlock snorted at John's sceptical expression. "Obviously I held out on him. I needed a negotiating position."

"Your moral sense is truly awesome, Sherlock." He had to ask. "Are you sorry that he's dead?"

"Someone was likely to get killed. Better him than you. Or, obviously, me." Sherlock dipped his head to pull on a nipple and John squirmed. That was hardly the emphatic denial he'd been hoping for but at least he believed it.

"Stop thinking, John!" Sherlock's tongue slid down his stomach, on downwards and John did what he was told, for a few minutes at least. Sherlock had been serious about fast; the wet warmth around John's cock was replaced by shockingly cold air before he was halfway through orgasm and he was rolled over by one hip, still twitching.

"Manners, Sherlock! Ask first!"

A loud sigh, then an exasperated "Please?"

He rolled over, sat up. "No." Grinned at Sherlock's expression. "Ask me again tomorrow." He dropped the smile." "You had the appalling arrogance to think that scarring SH into my body meant something. My body, Sherlock. Mine. Not any sort of possession of yours. I'm only going to do this once because I'm not a total bastard, but you will remember."

He started to pull his clothing together, gave the man half a minute or so before he looked at him. Sherlock was sitting up on the bed, naked, watching him.

"Well?"

"Definitely exasperated, then." Sherlock's smile came as something of a relief. "Remind me never to actually irritate you. We'll get a taxi over to Lestrade's. He can give his apology dinner a night early; I'm in the mood for seeing someone else discomforted tonight. And I now have plans for tomorrow evening, Dr John Watson permitting."

"All sounds good to me. Ten minutes for a shower." God, he felt better. Warm and post-orgasmic, and Jim was dead and he and Sherlock might actually come to some kind of mutual arrangement that worked. And he was about to see Greg Lestrade get all flustered and apologetic.

When he came out of the shower, however, with a towel wrapped around his waist, Lestrade was in the sitting room, with papers spread across the desk. Both men glanced briefly at him.

"Case?"

"Case." Sherlock confirmed. "It's a locked room murder, but without the room. There's a body, though. Coming?"

"Grab my clothes. Don't go without me."

"I wouldn't think of it. I'm not a total bastard." Sherlock's voice was entirely solemn. Lestrade was puzzling between them, clearly not sure if the barb was aimed at him. "Look, John. I'm really sorry about what happened..."

"Doesn't matter." John decided, running up the stairs for his clothes, that it really didn't. Jim was dead and the rest was all history, except for Sherlock, who it appeared was going to be very much the future. And a mysterious dead body out there, which was now. Could be a hell of a lot worse. It would do.

THE END


End file.
